Fig. 7

The AhR activated DCs promote Treg cell differentiation. The GM-CSF/IL-4-differentiated DCs were treated with or without 100 nM FICZ and then exposed with LPS to induce the maturation of DCs for the next 24 h. The control, DMSO, and FICZ-treated DCs were cocultured with CD4⁺ T cells for five days by adding IL-2 (100U/ml) and TGF-β1 (5 ng/ml) to the culture medium. The percentage of Treg cells was determined by flow cytometry, the expression of Foxp3 was detected by Western blotting, and the levels of IL-10 in the cocultured supernatant were measured by ELISA. Each experiment was repeated three and the data were collected from independent experiments for analysis. A Representative plots of Treg cells shown by flow cytometry; B Summarized data for the percentage of Treg cells presented and analyzed as Mean ± SD; C Image plot of Western blotting for Foxp3 expression. GAPDH was used as an internal control; D The relative intensity for bands of Foxp3 was normalized to GAPDH; E ELISA analysis of the levels of IL-10 in the supernatant of cocultured DC-T cells. ^*P < 0.05, ^***P < 0.001 versus the DMSO group. ns, not significant