title: MHC-based detection of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses.
abstract: The hallmark of adaptive immunity is its ability to recognise a wide range of antigens and technologies that capture this diversity are therefore of substantial interest. New methods have recently been developed that allow the parallel analysis of T cell reactivity against vast numbers of different epitopes in limited biological material. These technologies are based on the joint binding of differentially labelled MHC multimers on the T cell surface, thereby providing each antigen-specific T cell population with a unique multicolour code. This strategy of 'combinatorial encoding' enables detection of many (at least 25) different T cell populations per sample and should be of broad value for both T cell epitope identification and immunomonitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hematology, Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, CCIT, University Hospital Herlev, Herlev, Denmark. sireha02@heh.regionh.dk
authors.forename: Sine Reker
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Hadrup
authors.forename: Ton N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Schumacher
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000941:Antigens / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D018414:CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D018604:Epitope Mapping; D006649:Histocompatibility Antigens / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D015166:Monitoring, Immunologic / Q000379:methods*; D011485:Protein Binding; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D016176:T-Lymphocyte Subsets / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000941:Antigens; D006649:Histocompatibility Antigens