Author Spotlight: Optimized Protocol for Detecting Antigen-Specific T Cells in Mouse Lungs Using Tetramers

Our lab studies the development of CD4 T cells in different contexts of tolerance and immunity. Across our projects, we are primarily interested in how antigen exposure drives the development of phenotypic subsets of T cells that establish immune memory that can enhance tolerance to itself or immunity against pathogens. Recently we have focused on the development of regulatory and memory T-cell subsets that reside in lung tissue.

These tissue resident T cells play an important role in reinforcing tolerance to self-antigens during tissue injury, or promoting inflammatory responses to pathogens during reinfection. Our lab specializes in the direct study of antigen-specific T cells, but custom peptide MHC tetramer reagents. This allows us to study these T cells without the use of TCR transgenic models or other experimental manipulations that are known to cause experimental artifacts.

Although we can readily identify antigen-specific T cells with tetramers, these T cells are often present at very low frequencies, particularly when they’re in a naive or memory state. It is also challenging to isolate these T cells from non-lymphoid tissues where they’re often reside following an immune response. While there are several established protocols for isolating T cells from mouse lungs, the protocol we present here has been optimized for the subsequent detection of low frequency antigen-specific T cells by tetramer staining.

Within this protocol, we have also included two options for tissue association to better accommodate library resources. Our protocol will help researchers expand the use of tetramers to antigen-specific T cells in lung tissue. This will lead to more powerful in vivo studies of tissue resident memory T cell development and function, which are topics of intense interest in the field.