Abstract: Objective To approach a method for culturing dendritic cells (DC) from rhesus monkey bone marrow CD34+ cells, and identify the cells by morphological observation and cell surface marker detection. Methods Screen rhesus monkey bone marrow cells using a magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) system to collect highly purified CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells. Recombinant granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin-4 (IL-4) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were applied to isolated CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells to induce bone marrow-derived DCs. Morphological changes of cells were observed under an electron microscope, and cell surface molecules were detected using flow cytometry after cells were stained with DC surface marker CD1a and mature DC surface marker CD83.Results Typical DCs with surface villous and dendritic protrusions were identified 6 days after cytokine treatment. 92.35% of the cultured cells were DC and 27.61% of the cultured cells were mature DCs (mDC). Conclusions We established a method for culturing highly purified rhesus monkey bone marrow-derived immature DCs (imDC). Characterization of imDCs and functional studies will be carried out shortly.

Key words: rhesus monkeys, immature dendritic cells, immune tolerance