The immune system must simultaneously deal with both innocuous and harmful antigens that must be processed, transported to the lymph node and transferred to lymph node resident cells. These cells which remain distal to the site of challenge perform crucial functions in maintaining tolerance and in promoting robust immunity without access to the normal cues found at the challenge site. We have previously shown that migratory dendritic cells transfer tumour derived antigen at tight synapses to their lymph node resident counterparts but now using a novel reporter strain of Influenza A infection we have studied how information about an antigen’s background is co-transferred to these distal cells to keep a tight circuit between tissue and node. Furthermore we have investigated how this leads to the spread of tumour derived dysfunction to the lymph node.