Fig. 5: CGRP drives the development of dysfunctional DCs by preventing the loss of KLF2.

A Workflow of in vitro experiments. Monocytes isolated from PBMC were cultured and induced into immature DCs by specific cytokines. During induction, DCs were treated with 400 nM CGRP. After inducing maturation by cytokine cocktail for 24 h, DCs were harvested for RNA extraction and flow cytometry analysis. B Real-time PCR analysis of KLF2 transcripts at day 0,2,4 and 6 during DC induction (n = 3 for each timepoint). The box illustrates the interquartile range in relation to the median, while the middle lines represent the median, and the lower and upper hinges denote the 25–75% interquartile range (IQR), with whiskers extending up to a maximum of 1.5 times IQR. P value between groups in one day was calculated by unpaired student’s t test. C Real-time PCR analysis of KLF2 transcripts at day 6 during DC in different groups (n = 3 for each group). The data was presented as mean ± Standard deviation (SD). P values between groups were calculated by one-way ANNOVAR. D Representative flow cytometry histogram and increasing degrees of mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of co-stimulatory markers CD80, CD40, CD86 and HLA-DR expressed on DCs (n = 3 for each group). P values between groups were calculated by one-way ANNOVAR. The data was presented as mean ± SD. All experiments were performed independently for three times. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.