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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nano Today. 2011 Oct;6(5):466–477. doi: 10.1016/j.nantod.2011.08.005

Figure 1.

Figure 1

DC biology relevant to creating a cascading cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response upon infection. Immature DCs (iDC) in peripheral tissues (e.g., skin) encounter and eliminate pathogens by phagocytosis. DCs digest the antigens into small fragments of peptides, present those on their surface coupled to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), and become mature DCs (mDC). Mature DCs also express receptors (e.g., CCR7) that allow them to migrate to lymph nodes (LNs) in response to gradients of chemokine (e.g., CCL19/21) secreted from LNs. In LNs, DCs transfer the antigenic information to naïve CD8+ T cells via interactions between their surface receptors, including both MHC/antigen-T cell receptor (TCR) binding and CD80/86-CD28 interactions. CTLs are particularly driven by recognition of fragments presented from MHC class I molecules (one particular type of MHC). The activated CTLs leave the LNs to kill infected cells or pathogens. Inset: fluorescent microscope image of dendritic cells [5].