Overnight Resting of PBMC Changes Functional Signatures of Antigen Specific T- Cell Responses: Impact for Immune Monitoring within Clinical Trials

Sarah Kutscher, Claudia J. Dembek, Simone Deckert, Carolina Russo, Nina Körber, Johannes R. Bogner, Fabian Geisler, Andreas Umgelter, Michael Neuenhahn, Julia Albrecht, Antonio Cosma, Ulrike Protzer, Tanja Bauer*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

57 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Polyfunctional CD4 or CD8 T cells are proposed to represent a correlate of immune control for persistent viruses as well as for vaccine mediated protection against infection. A well-suited methodology to study complex functional phenotypes of antiviral T cells is the combined staining of intracellular cytokines and phenotypic marker expression using polychromatic flow cytometry. In this study we analyzed the effect of an overnight resting period at 37°C on the quantity and functionality of HIV-1, EBV, CMV, HBV and HCV specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses in a cohort of 21 individuals. We quantified total antigen specific T cells by multimer staining and used 10-color intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) to determine IFNγ, TNFα, IL2 and MIP1β production. After an overnight resting significantly higher numbers of functionally active T cells were detectable by ICS for all tested antigen specificities, whereas the total number of antigen specific T cells determined by multimer staining remained unchanged. Overnight resting shifted the quality of T-cell responses towards polyfunctionality and increased antigen sensitivity of T cells. Our data suggest that the observed effect is mediated by T cells rather than by antigen presenting cells. We conclude that overnight resting of PBMC prior to ex vivo analysis of antiviral T-cell responses represents an efficient method to increase sensitivity of ICS-based methods and has a prominent impact on the functional phenotype of T cells.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere76215
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume8
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11 Oct 2013
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Overnight Resting of PBMC Changes Functional Signatures of Antigen Specific T- Cell Responses: Impact for Immune Monitoring within Clinical Trials'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this