RORγt-expressing dendritic cells are functionally versatile and evolutionarily conserved antigen-presenting cells

Abstract

Conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) are potent antigen-presenting cells (APCs) that integrate signals from their environment allowing them to direct situation-adapted immunity. Thereby they harbor great potential for being targeted in vaccination, autoimmunity, and cancer. Here, we use fate mapping, functional analyses, and comparative cross-species transcriptomics to show that RORγt⁺ DCs are a conserved, functionally versatile, and transcriptionally distinct type of DCs. RORγt⁺ DCs entail various populations described in different contexts including Janus cells/RORγt-expressing extrathymic Aire-expressing cells (eTACs), subtypes of Thetis cells, RORγt⁺-DC (R-DC) like cells, cDC2C and ACY3⁺ DCs. We show that in response to inflammatory triggers, RORγt⁺ DCs can migrate to lymph nodes and in the spleen can activate naïve CD4⁺ T cells. These findings expand the functional repertoire of RORγt⁺ DCs beyond the known role of eTACs and Thetis cells in inducing T cell tolerance to self-antigens and intestinal microbes in mice. We further show that RORγt⁺ DCs with proinflammatory features accumulate in autoimmune neuroinflammation in mice and men. Thus, our work establishes RORγt⁺ DCs as immune sentinel cells that exhibit a broad functional spectrum ranging from inducing peripheral T cell tolerance to T cell activation depending on signals they integrate from their environment.