Fig. 5

SjCRT stimulates DCs to express the chemokine receptors CCR7 and CXCR4 and promotes CD4⁺ T cells to secrete Th1-type cytokines. DCs were stimulated with rSjCRT, LPS or PBS for 48 h. Cells were then harvested for analysis of CCR7 and CXCR4 expression by quantitative RT-PCR (a1-a2) CCR7: LPS t ₍₄₎ = 18.70, P = 0.0079, SjCRT t ₍₄₎ = 37.52, P = 0.0007; CXCR4: LPS t ₍₄₎ = 8.30, P = 0.02, SjCRT t ₍₄₎ = 23.05, P = 0.0019; and FACS (b1-b2, c1-c2) CCR7: LPS t ₍₃₎ = 14.54 P = 0.0047, SjCRT t ₍₃₎ = 14.39, P = 0.0048; CXCR4: LPS t ₍₃₎ = 111.7, P < 0.0001, SjCRT t ₍₃₎ = 9.931 P = 0.0100. Immature 5-day DCs were stimulated with 50 μg/ml SjCRT, 50 μl PBS or 50 ng/ml LPS at 37 °C under 5% CO₂ for 48 h. The PBS group was used as the negative control, and the LPS group was the positive control. Isolated CD4⁺ T cells from the splenocytes were incubated with different groups of DCs at 37 °C under 5% CO₂ for 7 days. The production of intracellular cytokines IL-4 and IFN-γ by CD4⁺ T cells was measured by FACS (d) IL-4: LPS t ₍₃₎ = 2.458, P = 0.0394, SjCRT t ₍₃₎ = 2.693, P = 0.0742; IFN-γ: LPS t ₍₄₎ = 10.90, P = 0.0017, SjCRT t ₍₃₎ = 3.809, P = 0.0318. Statistically significant differences compared with the negative control group are shown as *P < 0.05 or **P < 0.01