Real-Time In Vitro Migration Assay for Primary Murine CD8+ T Cells

The adaptive immune response is reliant on a T cell's ability to migrate through blood, lymph, and tissue in response to pathogens and foreign bodies. T cell migration is a complex process that requires the coordination of many signal inputs from the environment and local immune cells, including chemokines, chemokine receptors, and adhesion molecules. Furthermore, T cell motility is influenced by dynamic surrounding environmental cues, which can alter activation state, transcriptional landscape, adhesion molecule expression, and more. In vivo, the complexity of these seemingly intertwined factors makes it difficult to distinguish individual signals that contribute to T cell migration. This protocol provides a string of methods from T cell isolation to computer-aided analysis to assess T cell migration in real-time under highly specific environmental conditions. These conditions may help elucidate mechanisms that regulate migration, improving our understanding of T cell kinetics and providing strong mechanistic evidence that is difficult to attain through animal experiments. A deeper understanding of the molecular interactions that impact cell migration is important to develop improved therapeutics.