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Updated: Jun 10, 2026
In Vitro and In Vivo Assessment of T, B and Myeloid Cells Suppressive Activity and Humoral Responses from Transplant Recipients
Published on: August 12, 2017
Streptamer-based selection of WT1-specific CD8+ T cells for specific donor lymphocyte infusions
Xinchao Wang1, Anita Schmitt, Baoan Chen
1Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany.
Objective:
Donor lymphocyte infusions may generate a desirable graft-versus-leukemia effect, but also elicit a noxious graft-versus-host disease. A positive selection of leukemia (antigen)-specific T cells would be highly desirable. In this study, we focused on the immunogenic leukemia antigen Wilms' Tumor gene 1 (WT1).
Materials And Methods:
We employed the technology of streptamers available at good manufacturing practice level to first determine the frequency of human leukocyte antigen-A2 restricted WT1-specific CD8(+) T cells. Then, specific cells were labeled with streptamers and selected by magnetic cell separation. Purity and immunophenotype of selected cells were analyzed.
Results:
Twenty-one of 40 healthy donors had naïve WT1-specific CD8(+) T-cell frequencies of >0.5%, and 8 of 40 even >1.0% of all CD8(+) T cells. In 7 of 10 acute myeloid leukemia patients, the frequencies were 0.5% to 3.65%. After positive selection by magnetic cell separation, a 60-fold increase with a purity of up to 17.79% in the lymphocyte gate and 86.18% in the CD8(+) T-cell gate could be achieved for CD8(+)WT1 streptamer(+)CD28(+/-)CD45RA(+)CCR7(-) effector T cells.
Conclusions:
Streptamer technology allows selection of pure WT1-specific effector T cells. This is a prerequisite for clinical applications targeting tumor-specific antigens, such as adoptive T-cell transfer.
