Hapten-specific T cell-mediated skin inflammation also known as contact hypersensitivity (CHS) is characterized by a strong influx of CD8+ cytotoxic T cells within the skin upon reexposure of sensitized individuals to the same hapten. As many other leukocytes are also recruited during this elicitation phase, we attempted to revisit the skin infiltrate and characterize the inflammatory pattern. Recent improvement in the isolation in conventional as well as inflammatory dendritic cell and macrophage subsets from tissues and in the use of appropriate surface markers unraveling their heterogeneity should allow to determinate their specific functions in the CHS model. Here, we describe procedures to extract those cells from the skin and to analyze them by flow cytometry using a combination of appropriate surface markers allowing further transcriptomic analysis and functional assays.
Keywords: CD4+ T cells; CD8+ T cells; Contact hypersensitivity (CHS); Dendritic cell subsets; Flow cytometry; Macrophages; Monocyte-derived cells; Neutrophils; Skin; γδ T cells.