Eckol purified from Ecklonia cava, a brown alga has been known to have cytoprotective effects on some cell lines against oxidants and ionizing radiation. However, there is no study about the effects of eckol on immune cells.

Bone marrow (BM)-derived dendritic cells (DCs) were used to demonstrate the immunomodulatory effects of eckol on DCs, such as viability, the expression of surface markers, allogeneic stimulating capacity using MTT, flow cytometric, ³H-thymidine incorporation assay.

Eckol did protect DCs against cytokine withdrawal-induced apoptosis in a concentration dependent manner based on MTT assay. And also, it increased the expression of MHC class II and CD86 (B7.2) molecules, maturation markers, on the surface of viable DCs gated in FACS analysis. Furthermore, eckol-treated DCs stimulated the proliferation of allogeneic CD4⁺ T lymphocytes compared to imDCs in ³H-thymidine incorporation assay. CD4⁺ T lymphocytes activated with eckol-treated DCs produced the larger amount of IFN-γ and IL-4 than those cells with imDCs.

Taken together, we demonstrate in this study that eckol, a pure compound of Ecklonia cava, may modulate the immune responses through the phenotypic and functional changes of DCs.