Figure 4.

FimH-containing thermally responsive nanoparticles (F-TRH) promoted the activation of dendritic cells (DCs) in mice. (A) Illustration of the release of FimH from F-TRH in response to the elevated temperature and stimulation of DCs by the released FimH. CT-26 tumor-bearing mice were intratumorally injected with PBS, FimH, HNP, TRH, and F-TRH, and irradiated with NIR laser (2 W/cm², 5 min). (B) Definition of DC and its subsets in the tumor-draining lymph node (tdLN) is shown. (C) The mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of the co-stimulatory molecules and MHC class I and II in CD8α⁺ and CD8α^– tdLN DCs was measured using flow cytometry (n=6, **p<0.01). (D) The concentrations of IL-6, IL-12p40, and TNF-α in serum were measured using ELISA (n=6, **p<0.01). All the data are representative of the average of the analyses of six independent samples (ie, three samples per experiment, two independent experiments).