Functional activity of splenic DC after 14 days of treatment with VEGF. VEGF was infused for 14 days at 50 ng/h. DC were obtained from spleens and lymph nodes as described in Materials and Methods. In all experiments, open bars represent data from mice treated with PBS, hatched bars represent mice treated with VEGF. (*)Statistically significant differences between control and VEGF groups. In all experiments each group included three mice. Two experiments with the same results were performed. (A) Stimulation of allogeneic T cells by DC. DC were incubated for 3 days with T cells from allogeneic CBA mice at different DC:T cells ratios.³H-thymidine uptake was measured in triplicate. (B) The ability of DC obtained from control and VEGF-treated mice to stimulate primary T-cell proliferation. DC were infected with influenza (FLU) virus as described in Materials and Methods and then cultured for 3 days with T cells obtained from control mice at a T-cell:DC ratio of 20:1. ³H-thymidine uptake is shown. The background T-cell proliferation (syngeneic non-infected DC cultured with T cells) was subtracted. Mean ± SE of ³H-thymidine uptake of three experiments is shown. (C) FITC-dextran uptake by DC isolated from VEGF-treated mice. DC were isolated from spleens and the FITC-dextran uptake assay were performed as described in Materials and Methods. Results (mean ± SE) of two experiments are shown.