Generation of TCR-engineered T cells and their use to control the performance of T cell assays.

The systematic assessment of the human immune system bears huge potential to guide rational development of novel immunotherapies and clinical decision making. Multiple assays to monitor the quantity, phenotype, and function of Ag-specific T cells are commonly used to unravel patients' immune signatures in various disease settings and during therapeutic interventions. When compared with tests measuring soluble analytes, cellular immune assays have a higher variation, which is a major technical factor limiting their broad adoption in clinical immunology. The key solution may arise from continuous control of assay performance using TCR-engineered reference samples. We developed a simple, stable, robust, and scalable technology to generate reference samples that contain defined numbers of functional Ag-specific T cells. First, we show that RNA-engineered lymphocytes, equipped with selected TCRs, can repetitively deliver functional readouts of a controlled size across multiple assay platforms. We further describe a concept for the application of TCR-engineered reference samples to keep assay performance within or across institutions under tight control. Finally, we provide evidence that these novel control reagents can sensitively detect assay variation resulting from typical sources of error, such as low cell quality, loss of reagent stability, suboptimal hardware settings, or inaccurate gating.

Harmonisation of short-term in vitro culture for the expansion of antigen-specific CD8(+) T cells with detection by ELISPOT and HLA-multimer staining.

Ex vivo ELISPOT and multimer staining are well-established tests for the assessment of antigen-specific T cells. Many laboratories are now using a period of in vitro stimulation (IVS) to enhance detection. Here, we report the findings of a multi-centre panel organised by the Association for Cancer Immunotherapy Immunoguiding Program to investigate the impact of IVS protocols on the detection of antigen-specific T cells of varying ex vivo frequency. Five centres performed ELISPOT and multimer staining on centrally prepared PBMCs from 3 donors, both ex vivo and following IVS. A harmonised IVS protocol was designed based on the best-performing protocol(s), which was then evaluated in a second phase on 2 donors by 6 centres. All centres were able to reliably detect antigen-specific T cells of high/intermediate frequency both ex vivo (Phase I) and post-IVS (Phase I and II). The highest frequencies of antigen-specific T cells ex vivo were mirrored in the frequencies following IVS and in the detection rates. However, antigen-specific T cells of a low/undetectable frequency ex vivo were not reproducibly detected post-IVS. Harmonisation of the IVS protocol reduced the inter-laboratory variation observed for ELISPOT and multimer analyses by approximately 20 %. We further demonstrate that results from ELISPOT and multimer staining correlated after (P < 0.0001 and R (2) = 0.5113), but not before IVS. In summary, IVS was shown to be a reproducible method that benefitted from method harmonisation.