Injectable, Pore-Forming Hydrogels for In Vivo Enrichment of Immature Dendritic Cells.

ABSTRACT: Biomaterials-based vaccines have emerged as a powerful method to evoke potent immune responses directly in vivo, without the need for ex vivo cell manipulation, and modulating dendritic cell (DC) responses in a noninflammatory context could enable the development of tolerogenic vaccines to treat autoimmunity. This study describes the development of a noninflammatory, injectable hydrogel system to locally enrich DCs in vivo without inducing their maturation or activation, as a first step toward this goal. Alginate hydrogels that form pores in situ are characterized and used as a physical scaffold for cell infiltration. These gels are also adapted to control the release of granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), a potent inducer of DC recruitment and proliferation. In vivo

SUBMITTER: Verbeke CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4715727 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature