Dendritic cells modulate c-kit expression on the edge between activation and death
Dendritic cells (DCs) are key players in immunity and tolerance. Some DCs express c-kit, the receptor for stem cell factor (SCF), nevertheless c-kit functional role and the regulation of its expression in DCs are incompletely defined. We recently demonstrated that autocrine SCF sustains a pro-survival circuit, and that SCF increases phospho-AKT in c-kit+ mouse bone marrow-derived DCs (BMdDCs). Herein we observed that CpG and PolyI:C, two stimuli mimicking bacterial and viral nucleic acids respectively, strongly inhibited c-kit expression by BMdDCs and spleen DCs in vitro and in vivo.