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Updated: Mar 30, 2026

Whole-animal Imaging and Flow Cytometric Techniques for Analysis of Antigen-specific CD8+ T Cell Responses after Nanoparticle Vaccination
Published on: April 29, 2015
An Effective Immuno-PET Imaging Method to Monitor CD8-Dependent Responses to Immunotherapy
Richard Tavaré1, Helena Escuin-Ordinas2, Stephen Mok3
1Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. rtavare@mednet.ucla.edu awu@mednet.ucla.edu.
Abstract:
The rapidly advancing field of cancer immunotherapy is currently limited by the scarcity of noninvasive and quantitative technologies capable of monitoring the presence and abundance of CD8(+) T cells and other immune cell subsets. In this study, we describe the generation of (89)Zr-desferrioxamine-labeled anti-CD8 cys-diabody ((89)Zr-malDFO-169 cDb) for noninvasive immuno-PET tracking of endogenous CD8(+) T cells. We demonstrate that anti-CD8 immuno-PET is a sensitive tool for detecting changes in systemic and tumor-infiltrating CD8 expression in preclinical syngeneic tumor immunotherapy models including antigen-specific adoptive T-cell transfer, agonistic antibody therapy (anti-CD137/4-1BB), and checkpoint blockade antibody therapy (anti-PD-L1). The ability of anti-CD8 immuno-PET to provide whole body information regarding therapy-induced alterations of this dynamic T-cell population provides new opportunities to evaluate antitumor immune responses of immunotherapies currently being evaluated in the clinic.

