Dendritic cells lentivirally engineered to overexpress interleukin-10 inhibit contact hypersensitivity responses, despite their partial activation induced by transduction-associated physical stress.

Background Dendritic cells (DCs) constitute an attractive target for immunotherapeutic approaches. Because DCs are largely refractory to transfection with plasmid DNA, several viral transduction protocols were established. The potential side-effects of lentiviral transduction on the phenotype and activation state of DCs left unstimulated after transduction have not been assessed. There is a need to analyse these parameters as a result of the requirement of using DCs with a low activation state for therapeutic strategies intended to induce tolerance. Methods Lentivirally-transduced bone marrow (BM)-derived DCs (LV-DCs) in comparison with mock-transduced (Mock-DCs) and untreated DCs were anal…