The intention of the work described in this thesis was to identify whether the
Notch signalling pathway is utilized by antigen presenting cells in order to influence
CD4+ adaptive immune responses. The notion that Notch proteins may be involved
in polarising CD4+ T cells is relatively recent and most of the work that had been
done in this area so far has concentrated on the consequences of Notch signalling
within T cells. In contrast, the work that I have done has focussed on Notch ligand
expression by antigen presenting cells and addresses the question whether Notch
signalling is a redundant, necessary or irrelevant tool in the arsenal of antigen
presentation
