Unmet Need:A significant challenge in determining the response to Adoptive T cell Transfer (ACT) therapy is the difficulty in assessing the trafficking of antigen specific T cells as well as the therapeutic effect against tumors in vivo without killing the mice. Understanding of the trafficking of antigen-specific CD8
+ T cells in vivo will provide insight about how our immune system controls infectious diseases and cancers.
Technology Overview:Johns Hopkins researcher, TC Wu has developed the E7T-LUC cell line by infecting a HPV-16 E7-specific CD8+ T cell line with retrovirus that contains a plasmid encoding firefly luciferase and thy1.1. The resulted E7T-LUC cell line constantly express firefly luciferase, which allows for the monitoring of T cell expansion and assess the ability of therapeutic interventions to elicit E7-specific immune responses through luminescence imaging. Furthermore, the ability to monitor the location of T cells in mice allows for the examination of T cell infiltration into tumor location based on the migration of luminescence signals.
Stage of Development:Dr. Wu has
in vivo data in mice showing that injected E7-specific T cells preferentially migrated to the E7-expressing tumor site but not to the E7-negative control tumor site, and increased in number at the tumor site over time.
Publications:D. Kim, C.-F. Hung and T.-C. Wu. (2007) Monitoring the trafficking of adoptively transferred antigen-specific CD8-positive T cells in vivo, using noninvasive luminescence imaging.
Hum Gene Ther. 18: 575-588.
