Shaping of adaptive immune responses to soluble proteins by TLR agonists: a role for IFN-alpha/beta.

Toll-like receptors (TLR) are believed to play a major role in the recognition of invading organisms, although their ability to shape immune responses is not completely understood. Our aim was to investigate in vivo the effect of different TLR stimuli on the generation of antibody responses and the induction of CD8+ T-cell cross-priming after immunization with soluble protein antigens. While all TLR agonists tested elicited the production of immunomodulatory cytokines, marked differences were observed in their ability to stimulate antigen-specific immune responses.