To assay T-cell responses in vitro, purified CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (2 × 105/well) were cultured

for 2 days with increasing doses of hgp100 peptide (for spleen cells of pmel-1 transgenic mice), concanavalin A (Sigma-Aldrich, St Louis, MO), or ELISA plates pre-coated with various doses of anti-CD3 and DC-HIL-Fc or control immunoglobulin. After pulsing with [3H]thymidine (1 μCi/well) in the last 20 hr of the culture period, cells were collected and counted for [3H] radioactivity. Culture supernatant was also harvested and stored at − 85° until required for assaying IL-2, interferon-γ and tumour necrosis factor-α using mouse ELISA kits (BD Pharmingen). The CD4+ T cells (1 × 106) were labelled with 1 μm carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl find more ester (CFSE; Molecular Probes, Eugene, OR) in Dulbecco’s PBS at 37° for 15 min. After another 30 min of incubation in culture medium, labelled T Vemurafenib ic50 cells were cultured in ELISA wells pre-coated with anti-CD3 antibody (1 μg/ml). At different time-points thereafter, cells were examined for asynchronous cell division by flow cytometry.[16] Bone-marrow-derived DC (BMDC) were harvested

from day 6 cultures of BM cells isolated from BALB/c mice with 10 ng/ml granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor[17] and used as stimulators. CD4+ T cells purified from KO or WT C57BL/6 mice served as responders.[12] A constant number of BM-DC (5 × 104 cells) was mixed with varying numbers of CD4+ T cells in 96-well plates and cultured for 3 days. T-cell activation was measured by IL-2 production and [3H]thymidine incorporation. To examine the impact of SD-4 deletion

on the reactivity of CD8+ T cells to APC co-stimulation, BMDC (2 × 104 cells/well) prepared from BM cells of WT mice were pulsed with hgp100 peptide (1 μg/ml) and co-cultuerd with varying numbers of pmel-1 CD8+ T cells (0 × 105 to 2 × 105 cells/well) for 72 hr. To examine the effect of SD-4 deletion on APC capacity of DC, BMDC prepared from KO or WT mice were seeded on 96-well plates (1 × 103 to 40 × 103 cells/well), and pulsed for 3 hr with OVA323–339 peptide (2 μg/ml).[18] Cultured DC were added to CD4+ T cells (1 × 105/well) purified from the spleens of OT-II transgenic mice. FER One day after co-culture, IL-2 in the culture supernatant was measured by ELISA. Recipient BALB/c mice were treated with antibiotic water (sulfomethoxazole-trimethoprim; Hi-Tech Pharmacal Co., Inc. Amityville, NY) from 3 days before γ-irradiation daily through until day 28. On day 0, recipients were subjected to total body γ-irradiation (6 Gy) and, within 24 hr, were injected via the tail vein with 1 × 107 T-cell-depleted BM cells (from WT mice) and 5 × 105 splenic T cells purified from three KO or WT mice. T-cell depletion was performed using biotinylated anti-Thy1.