Dr. Hargadon and 3 H-SC students (Chad Harte ’09, Osric Forrest ’11, and Yonathan Ararso ’12) recently published their collaborative research on suppression of dendritic cells by melanoma in the American Journal of Immunology. This work characterized the effects of melanoma-derived factors on the maturation and activation of two dendritic cell lines, DC2.4 and JAWSII. While both cell lines were suppressed by the murine melanoma B16-F1, the extent of this suppression differed. Both costimulatory molecule and proinflammatory cytokine/chemokine production were altered in DC2.4 cells, while cytokine/chemokine was largely unaffected in JAWSII dendritic cells (though costimulatory molecules were still suppressed). These results highlight the utility of these dendritic cell lines for studying melanoma-associated suppression of dendritic cells and suggest that these cell lines will serve as important research tools for understanding factors that regulate resistance versus susceptibility to different aspects of tumor-associated suppression of dendritic cells!