Combined Phosphoepitope Specific Flow Cytometry and MHC-Multimer Staining - A New Tool to Monitor Antigen-Specific Signaling in CMV-Specific T-Cells.

Abstract 4737

Flow cytometry has become a routine method in both clinical and basic immunological research. Its ability to differentiate between distinct populations of cells by surface staining of various parameters is a main advantage since we have the possibility to identify antigen-specific T-cells by flow cytometry through the development of soluble multimeric peptide–MHC complexes. Nevertheless, surface staining does not provide information about the functionality of the analyzed cell populations. Hence, further methods have been described to define cells by detection of intracellular epitopes. These assays include the intracellular staining of distinct cytokines or phosporylated signaling molecules (Phosflow). MHC-multimer approaches combined with intracellular cytokine staining are routinely used, whereas the detection of intracellular p-kinases under MHC-multimer staining applying the Phosflow-protocols has not been realized so far. The use of phosphoepitope analysis in antigen-specific T-cells is of high interest in infections or especially during immunosuppressive drug treatment. Therefore, we aimed to establish a dual multimer-phospho-staining protocol to provide a method to get insight into the biochemical signaling processes in antigen-specific T-cells. We chose CTL responses against CMV as model system due to well established epitopes and high frequency in healthy donors. The original Phosflow-protocols did not turn out to be suitable for a combination with MHC-multimer staining. The very harsh fixation and permeabilization procedures largely or completely abrogated the antigen-specific staining. We have been able to stain both the CMV-specific T-cell-receptor and phosphorylated kinases following polyclonal stimuli (e.g. PMA, IL-2 etc.) using different protocols for some p-kinases (ERK, STAT5, NfKB, p38). These protocols allow a combination of specific T-cell-receptor staining with that of intranuclear phosphoepitopes after polyclonal stimulation. In preliminary experiments, we have also been able to show a specific phosphorylation of the ERK molecule after stimulation with CMV-specific artificial antigen-presenting cells or antibody-coated plates. As mentioned above, the use of phosphoepitope analysis in antigen-specific T-cells may offer the possibility to correlate immunological anergy with distinct signaling processes in defined clinical situations, e.g. in immunosuppressed patients post alloSCT.