The assessment of the skin sensitising capacity of chemicals is up to now investigated using in vivo animal tests. However there has been an increasing public and governmental concern regarding the use of animals for chemical screening. This has raised the need for the development of validated in vitro alternatives. Langerhans cells are potent antigen-presenting cells that play a crucial role in the development of allergic contact dermatitis. We used CD34(+) progenitor-derived dendritic cells from cord blood as an in vitro alternative for Langerhans cells. The cells were exposed to four contact allergens (nickel sulphate, dinitrochlorobenzene, oxazolone and eugenol) and two irritants (sodium dodecyl sulphate and benzalkonium chloride) for 3, 6, 12 and 24h. Using microarray analyses we revealed a set of 25 genes with an altered gene expression pattern after exposure to allergens and not to irritants. Five out of these 25 genes were selected and their gene expression changes were confirmed with real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. The list of 25 genes represent valuable candidates to be further evaluated for their capacity to predict the sensitizing potential of different classes of chemicals in studies using a more extended set of (non) allergic substances.