QuickSwitch ™: an MHC tetramer platform for making fast and reliable custom tetramers for T cell staining

Abstract

The use of MHC tetramers to identify antigen specific T cells has become widespread among immunologists since the late 90s. Tetramers have become so ubiquitous that many companies and research facilities can ship and deliver some of the most commonly used tetramers within a matter of days. But when it comes to the uncommon tetramers or tetramers with antigenic peptides that have only recently been identified, it may be quite a challenge to find the needed tetramer. In this case, most researchers are left with trying to produce their own tetramer or having another facility do it for them, which can become a lengthy process. In an effort to help those researchers, we have developed the QuickSwitch ™MHC tetramer. This MHC tetramer comes loaded with a place-holder peptide (or exiting peptide) that can be exchanged for most well-binding peptides of a given MHC haplotype. This way, researchers are able to make a tetramer with any peptide they have available in a matter of hours. More importantly, our MHC tetramer platform comes with a means to monitor how much of the available peptide has exchanged with the exiting peptide and quantify the MHC occupancy. This allows the user to not only determine if the peptide in question can make a viable MHC tetramer, but also identify the strong and weak binding peptides for that MHC haplotype. This piece of information can be invaluable in future studies, in particular for vaccine development. MBL International