Harnessing indirectly activated DCs to protect from autoimmunity

T cells bearing T-cell receptors (TCRs) with low affinity often escape central tolerance and populate the periphery, where they can cause autoimmune diseases. Here, we seek to investigate whether dendritic cells (DCs) that have been activated in an indirect fashion have the unique ability to foster peripheral tolerance on such low avidity self-reactive T cells, and to investigate a potential role of costimulatory molecules in this process. Our strategy to investigate this concept involves the antibody-mediated targeting of a model antigen to murine DC subsets in vivo in conjunction with non-cognate adjuvants.