Profiling T cell interaction and activation through microfluidics-assisted serial encounter with APCs

Adoptive T cell therapy that collected from the patient's blood for treating cancer and chronic infections has revolutionized the field of oncology and personalized medicine. However, such highly activated T cells that have specific T cell receptor (TCR) against the target disease are usually greatly outnumbered by not-activated T cells due to the stochastic generation of TCR by V(D)J recombination, approximately 10(6)similar to 10(7) possible TCR. In this report, for the purpose of representing the lymph node where T cells can migrate on the surface of the antigen presenting cells (APCs) for activation or sequentially interact to multiple APCs, an open-type PDMS microfluidic device has been developed. This device mimics the microenvironment of a lymph node for the T cells to scan, contact and interact with APC and has the structure for the plan to collect the cells and conduct downstream analysis later on. By measuring and profiling Ca2+ flux of the T cell that interacted with APC, the threshold classifying whether T cells activation is specific or not was calculated. This new tool is expected to be useful in providing new insight and strategy to basic biology.

Automated summary

The report discusses the development of an open-type PDMS microfluidic device to mimic the microenvironment of a lymph node for T cells to interact with APC. By measuring the Ca2+ flux of T cells interacting with APC, the threshold for specific T cell activation has been calculated. This new tool is expected to provide new insights and strategies for basic biology.