Tolerogenic dendritic cells as a target for the therapy of immune thrombocytopenia.

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disease in which platelets are destroyed by special antiplatelet autoantibodies produced by B cells. Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells involved in humoral immunity and cellular immunity and among them DCs that induce autoimmune tolerance are called tolerogenic DCs (tDCs). As a promising immunotherapeutic strategy for ITP, tDCs have received increasing attention. In this review, we describe the significant role of DCs in regulating autoimmune balances, introduce the manipulation strategies to generate tDCs, summarize recent progress on the experimental application of tDCs for ITP therapy, and finally discuss the perspectives of tolerogenic vaccination for ITP treatment in the clinic.