parvum antigens on dendritic cells, we generated an enriched population of immature DCs by culturing whole BM cells in GM-CSF. We assessed the differentiation status of the loosely adherent cells by day 14. On the day of the BM harvest, <5% of whole BM cells were expressing the myeloid DC markers. By the time the cells were harvested

from the plates, at day 14, >90% of the cells were expressing CD11c and CD11b and a subset expressed other DC markers, such as CD86, CD80, CD40 and MHCII (Figure 1). These unstimulated DCs were then used for subsequent in vitro studies. The same time frame and format was used for the DCs generated from the whole BM Opaganib datasheet of the MyD88 KO mice (data not shown). In order to identify the differentiation/maturation status of the BMDC, we examined the expression levels of DC-SIGN (CD209) as well as CD86, CD80, CD40, MHCI and MHCII as shown in Figure 1. CD86 and CD80 were already high in the unstimulated cells, whereas marked increases were observed with CD40, MHCII and CD209 when DCs were treated with either sporozoites

or cryptosporidial antigen-treated cultures. In order to investigate the role DCs play in eliciting responses to different C. parvum antigen presentation/maturation, we incubated DCs with either freshly excysted intact sporozoites or solubilized sporozoite lysate. We also looked at the responses to several recombinant antigens, such as Cp23, Cp40, Cp17 and P2 (18,22,24). All antigen preparations as well as conditioned media preparations were tested for endotoxin and were below 0·03 EU. Lipopolysaccharide was used as a positive Epigenetics Compound Library molecular weight control and was also tested at different concentrations and yielded consistent results, indicating that MoDCs were biologically active. As shown in Figure 2(a), solubilized sporozoite antigen was able to induce significant increases in the expression of IL-12p70

from DCs as compared to Thymidylate synthase media alone (>200-fold increase), whereas freshly excysted sporozoites induced much lower-level IL-12 responses. In contrast, expression levels of IL-12p70 from DCs isolated from MyD88 KO mice were at or below background levels (Figure 2a, b). Recombinant antigens Cp40 and Cp23 were also able to significantly increase IL-12p70 expression, as observed in Figure 2(b). This finding indicates that the solubilized as well as recombinant antigens can induce the maturation of the DCs and subsequently initiate an innate immune response. Treatment of dendritic cells with cryptosporidial antigens induced increased expression levels of the Th1 cytokine, IL-2 (Figure 3 a, b). Again, significantly reduced expression levels of IL-2 were observed in the BMDCs of MyD88 KO mice in responses to C. parvum antigen, with the exception of LPS that has been shown to induce the maturation of MyD88-deficient dendritic cells (25).