Issue Archive

The cover shows a splenic white pulp area of a mouse with reconstituted human immune system components. Human B cells are stained for CD20 in green, human T cells for CD3 in blue, and human dendritic cells (DCs) for DEC-205 in red. The authors describe that all human conventional and plasmacytoid DCs develop in these mice and can be activated by synthetic single- and double-stranded RNA mimics. The smallest conventional DC subset with the highest DEC-205 expression produces high levels of IFN-a in addition to IL-12 after double-stranded RNA recognition, and the combination of antigen targeting to DEC-205 with synthetic double-stranded RNA as adjuvant is able to elicit viral antigen specific CD4⁺ T cell responses in these mice. See the article by Meixlsperger et al on page 5034.