Dendritic cells (DC) constitute a heterogeneous leukocyte population having in common a unique capacity to induce primary T cell responses and are therefore most attractive candidates for immunomodulatory strategies. Two populations of blood DC (CD11c+ CD123(dim) and CD11c- CD123(high)) have been defined so far. However, their direct isolation for experimental purposes is hampered by their low ...

A model-based gating strategy is developed for sorting cells and analyzing populations of single cells. The strategy, named CCAST, for Clustering, Classification and Sorting Tree, identifies a gating strategy for isolating homogeneous subpopulations from a heterogeneous population of single cells using a data-derived decision tree representation that can be applied to cell sorting. Because CCAS...

Background Dendritic cells (DCs) are known to contribute the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases through presentation cartilage glycoprotein, production proinflammatory cytokines and activation Th1/Th17 responses. DCs a heterogeneous population can be divided into groups: myeloid (mDCs) plasmacytoid (pDCs). induce both immune response tolerance. Objectives The study is aimed at investigating su...

BACKGROUND Functional autoantibodies against the alpha-chain of the high-affinity IgE receptor (FcepsilonRIalpha) identify a subset of patients with chronic urticaria (CU) due to autoreactivity, as assessed by an in vivo positive response to autologous serum skin test (ASST). We performed a study to standardize the serum-induced basophil activation assay by flow cytometry (FCM) using a new tric...

To extend prior studies implicating treponemal lipoproteins as major proinflammatory agonists of syphilitic infection, we examined the responses induced by intradermal injection of human subjects with synthetic lipoprotein analogues (lipopeptides) corresponding to the N termini of the 17- and 47-kDa lipoproteins of Treponema pallidum. Responses were assessed visually and by flow cytometric anal...