Dendritic cells (DC) are the most potent APCs within the immune system. We show here that highly purified CD14(bright) peripheral blood monocytes supplemented with granulocyte-monocyte (GM)-CSF plus IL-4 develop with high efficacy (>95% of input cells) into DC. They neo-expressed CD1a, CD1b, CD1c, CD80, and CD5; they massively up-regulated CD40 (109-fold) and HLA-DQ and DP (125- and 87-fold); and significantly (>5-fold) up-regulated HLA-DR, CD4, CD11b, CD11c, CD43, CD45, CD45R0, CD54, CD58, and CD59. CD14, CD15s, CD64, and CDw65 molecules were down-regulated to background levels, and no major changes were observed for HLA class I, CD11a, CD32, CD33, CD48, CD50, CD86, CDw92, CD93, or CD97. Monocytes cultured in parallel with GM-CSF plus TNF-alpha were more heterogeneous in expression densities but otherwise similar in their surface molecule repertoire. They clearly differed, however, in their accessory cell capacity. Only GM-CSF plus IL-4-cultured cells were found to be potent stimulators in allogeneic and autologous MLR and they presented tetanus toxoid 100- to 1000-fold more efficiently than other cell populations tested. Furthermore, only cytokine-treated monocytes formed clusters with resting T cells. At variance from all these similarities between in vitro-generated monocyte-derived DC and in vivo-developing DC, the DC populations generated by us contained significant amounts of myeloperoxidase and also expressed lysozyme. At least in this respect they, thus, differ from "classical" DC types.