Microfluidic T Cell Selection by Cellular Avidity. Issue 16 (21st June 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ashby, Julian F.; Schmidt, Julien; KC, Neelima; Kurum, Armand; Koch, Caroline; Harari, Alexandre; Tang, Li; Au, Sam H.
• Is Part Of: Advanced healthcare materials. Volume 11:Issue 16(2022)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2022-06-21
• Subjects: avidity -- cytotoxicity -- immunotherapy -- microfluidics -- shear stress -- synapses -- T cell receptors; Biomedical materials -- Periodicals; 610.28
• DOI: 10.1002/adhm.202200169
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2192-2640

Abstract

Abstract: No T cell receptor (TCR) T cell therapies have obtained clinical approval. The lack of strategies capable of selecting and recovering potent T cell candidates may be a contributor to this. Existing protocols for selecting TCR T cell clones for cell therapies such as peptide multimer methods have provided effective measurements on TCR affinities. However, these methods lack the ability to measure the collective strength of intercellular interactions (i.e., cellular avidity) and markers of T cell activation such as immunological synapse formation. This study describes a novel microfluidic fluid shear stress‐based approach to identify and recover highly potent T cell clones based on the cellular avidity between living T cells and tumor cells. This approach is capable of probing approximately up to 10 000 T cell–tumor cell interactions per run and can recover potent T cells with up to 100% purity from mixed populations of T cells within 30 min. Markers of cytotoxicity, activation, and avidity persist when recovered high cellular avidity T cells are subsequently exposed to fresh tumor cells. These results demonstrate how microfluidic probing of cellular avidity may fast track the therapeutic T cell selection process and move the authors closer to precision cancer immunotherapy. Abstract : This study describes a novel microfluidic fluid shear stress‐based approach to identify potent T cell clones based on cellular avidity between living T cells and tumor cells. This method is capable of analyzing thousands of T cell–tumor cell interactions and can discriminate and recover highly potent T cells with up to 100% purity from mixed populations of T cells.