T-cell sensitization is critical for tumor-associated antigens (TAA) to elicit cellular immune responses. Creative Biolabs is a biopharmaceutical company focused on target discovery for cancer immunotherapy. With accomplished and talented scientists, we offer a full range of TAA immunogenic epitopes in vitro assay services to our global customers, including HLA stabilization assay, T-cell sensitization experiments and APCs assay.
What is the Sensitization of T-Cell?
In the body's immune system, cells need to process the presented antigenic peptides to lymphocytes in order to stimulate antigen-specific immune responses. Therefore, antigens must be processed and presented to T cells by antigen-presenting cells (APCs), such as dendritic cells (DCs) to activate specific T lymphocytes. This process is also called the sensitization of T cells (Fig.1).
T cells play a critical role in inhibiting tumor growth and causing the regression of cancer, especially CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Because CD8+ CTL is able to lyse tumor cells directly and infiltrate and destroy tumor masses, much attention has been paid to tumor antigen recognized by CD8+ T cells. CD8+ T cells are sensitized by antigens presented by APCs along with MHC. Once sensitized, they are activated to proliferate to produce subsequent anti-tumor responses.
Fig.1 The activation of specific T lymphocytes.
T-Cell Sensitization Experiments at Creative Biolabs
Early contact of T cells with DCs and signals provided by DCs has a crucial and lasting effect on the important functional qualities of T cells. Myeloid-origin DCs can develop into IL-12-secreting DC1 or non-IL-12-secreting DC2 depending on the signal received during maturation. Both DC1 and DC2 could sensitize CD8+ T cells that recognized peptide-pulsed target cells. However, for DC2, a general decoupling is observed between recognition of peptide-pulsed target cells and recognition of antigen-expressing tumor cells, wherein peptide-sensitized T cells respond to tumors only about 15% of the time. In contrast, direct recognition of tumor by T cells is significantly increased when DC1 is used for sensitization. Enhanced tumor recognition is accompanied by 10- to 100-fold increases in peptide sensitivity and elevated expression of CD8β, which is the characteristic of high-function affinity T cells. These properties are all IL-12 dependent.
Both DC1 and DC2 have been shown to sensitize CD8+ T cells. By rapid culture technique, mature DC1 or DC2 can be prepared in only 2 days, followed by 6-7 days of DC-T cell co-culture. The utility of rapid DC culture methods for efficiently sensitizing T cells in vitro achieves robust priming and expansion of antigen-specific populations within 6 days. In this way, we sensitize normal donor CD8+ cells to tumor antigens, thereby enhancing the direct recognition of tumors by T cells. The workflow of our T cell sensitization experiment is as follows:
Deliverables
In addition to the above T cell sensitization experiments, we can also provide subsequent T cell function verification by several methods, including cytotoxicity assays, ELISA assays, and FACS assays. If you would like more information about our services, please feel free to contact us.
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