Dendritic cells are a specialized family of professional antigen presenting cells that serve as a bridge linking the innate and adaptive arms of our immune system. Dendritic cells sense pathogens or interact with harmless antigens or nonpathogenic bacteria thereby tightly regulating the balance between tolerance and immunity. Despite their indispensable role in eliciting immune responses, dendritic cells are a rather rare and heterogeneous type of immune cell, which differ in phenotype and function depending on maturation status, subsets, and age as well as their localization and microenvironment. Although scarce in numbers, cultured or naturally occurring dendritic cells have extensively been investigated in clinical trials for both their capacity to prime antigen specific cytotoxic and helper T cells and humoral responses as well as their potential to induce immunological memory, which are capacities that distinct them from other, nowadays, exploited forms of immunotherapy.

Cancer immunotherapy has been designated the scientific breakthrough of the year in 2013. This has a broader implication for dendritic cell research in general, as dendritic cell based therapy can also be used to induce tolerance in autoimmune or immune-based diseases or to induce or improve immunity in, for instance, virally infected individuals. Therefore, this journal would like to invite investigators to contribute original research articles, as well as review/perspective articles that seek to address the therapeutic potential of the use of dendritic cell subsets for dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases.

This journal, as an open access journal, provides immediate, worldwide, barrier-free access to the full-text of all published articles in this special issue. The most recent impact factor for the journal is 2.417 according to 2013 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters in 2014. All articles will undergo a peer-review process prior to their publishing.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Generation of tolerogenic dendritic cells for the treatment of patients suffering from inflammatory diseases or autoimmunity
• Generation of dendritic cell vaccines for cancer therapy
• The role of dendritic cell subsets in cancer
• Preclinical dendritic cell vaccination studies
• Effect of ageing on dendritic cell function
• The role for cytotoxic effector functions exploited by dendritic cells
• The influence of the microenvironment on dendritic cell behaviour, for example, soluble factors and suppressive cell types
• Crosstalk between dendritic cells and other immune cells; augmented immune responses
• Functional consequences of cellular heterogeneity
• In vivo dendritic cell-targeting strategies
• Lessons learned from previous and ongoing DC-based clinical trials