These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.
Pubmed for Handhelds
PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS
Search MEDLINE/PubMed
Title: Isolation of high avidity melanoma-reactive CTL from heterogeneous populations using peptide-MHC tetramers. Author: Yee C, Savage PA, Lee PP, Davis MM, Greenberg PD. Journal: J Immunol; 1999 Feb 15; 162(4):2227-34. PubMed ID: 9973498. Abstract: Immunogenic peptides of human tumor Ag have been used to generate antigen-specific CTL. However, the vast majority of these peptide-specific CTL clones are of low avidity and are peptide, but not tumor, reactive. Peptide-MHC tetramers have been shown to bind specific TCRs with sufficient affinity to be useful reagents for flow cytometry. In this paper we demonstrate that peptide-MHC tetramers can also be used to selectively identify high avidity tumor-reactive CTL and enrich, from a heterogeneous population, the subpopulation of peptide-reactive T cells that can lyse tumor targets. The melanoma proteins, MART-1 and gp100, were used to induce potentially tumor-reactive T cells, and the intensity of T cell staining by TCR binding of specific peptide-MHC tetramers was assessed. A range of fluorescence intensity was detected, and the magnitude of tetramer binding was correlated with T cell avidity. The population of peptide-reactive T cells was phenotypically similar with regard to expression of TCR and adhesion molecules, suggesting that this differential avidity for tumor cells reflected differential affinity of the TCR for its peptide-MHC ligand. Sorting, cloning, and expansion of tetramerhigh CTL from a heterogeneous population of peptide-stimulated PBMCs enabled rapid selection of high avidity tumor-reactive CTL clones, which retained their functional and tetramerhigh phenotype on re-expansion. These results demonstrate that the avidity of a T cell for its tumor target is due to the specific affinity of the TCR for its peptide-MHC ligand, that this interaction can be described using peptide-MHC tetramers and used to isolate high avidity tumor-reactive CTL.[Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]