Dendritic cell

A dendritic cell is an antigen-presenting immune cell that captures material, displays antigen fragments to T cells, and helps initiate and shape adaptive immune responses.

Antigen presentation: The display of peptide fragments bound to major histocompatibility complex molecules for recognition by T cells. Dendritic cells connect captured material to T cells through this display process.
Innate immunity: The rapid, broadly targeted defenses that recognize common features of microbes and tissue damage. Dendritic cells belong to innate defenses while linking them to adaptive immunity.
Dendritic cell vaccine: An immunotherapy that prepares dendritic cells with tumor or other antigens and returns them to the body. It uses dendritic cells directly to improve antigen presentation against disease.
Macrophage: A tissue phagocyte that engulfs microbes and debris, coordinates inflammation, and can present antigen. Macrophages often act locally, whereas dendritic cells are especially effective at priming naïve T cells.
Ralph Steinman: A Canadian-American immunologist who discovered dendritic cells and studied their role in immune activation. His work established dendritic cells as a distinct class of immune cell.
Major histocompatibility complex: A group of cell-surface proteins that bind antigen-derived peptides and present them to T cells. Its molecules carry the antigen fragments displayed by dendritic cells.
Adaptive immunity: Antigen-specific immune defense mediated chiefly by B and T lymphocytes and their memory cells. Dendritic cells initiate and shape this specialized arm of immunity.
Sipuleucel-T: An autologous cellular immunotherapy for prostate cancer that activates a patient's immune cells against prostatic acid phosphatase. This approved therapy uses antigen-presenting cells in a product often described as a dendritic-cell vaccine.
B cell: A lymphocyte that can recognize antigen and differentiate into antibody-secreting plasma cells or memory cells. B cells present antigen to helper T cells but specialize in antibody-mediated immunity.
Cell differentiation: The process by which a cell acquires specialized structure and function from a less specialized state. Dendritic-cell subsets arise through distinct differentiation pathways from hematopoietic progenitors.

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