Granzyme B produced by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Promotes Antigen uptake While Suppressing Premature T cell Activation

Abstract

In addition to the impact GzmB has on antigen uptake, the way it cleaves peptides can result in fragments that represent neo-antigens, allowing the establishment of increased immune responses towards such antigens [16,17]. Thus, one reason for The serine protease granzyme B (GzmB) is classically known to be an apoptogenic effector molecule produced by cytotoxic cells including NK cells and CD8+ T lymphocytes [1]. However,a series of further cell types are able to express GzmB, most of them in the absence of perforin.Below them are different antigen-presenting cells (APC) including B cells [2, 3], monocyte derived dendritic cells [4, 5] and plasmacytoid dendritic cells [6, 7]. Meanwhile we know that GzmB contributes to a variety of APC-related functions. GzmB may therefore represent a promising novel target for the improvement of vaccination approaches based on the use of pDC and other dendritic cell types expressing GzmB.