Assaying and classifying T cell function by cell morphology

Immune cell function varies tremendously between individuals, posing a major challenge to emerging cellular immunotherapies. This report pursues the use of cell morphology as an indicator of high-level T cell function. Short-term spreading of T cells on planar, elastic surfaces was quantified by 11 morphological parameters and analyzed to identify effects of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Our findings identified morphological features that varied between T cells isolated from healthy donors and those from patients being treated for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). This approach also identified differences between cell responses to substrates of different elastic modulus. Combining multiple features through a machine learning approach such as Decision Tree or Random Forest provided an effective means for identifying whether T cells came from healthy or CLL donors. Further development of this approach could lead to a rapid assay of T cell function to guide cellular immunotherapy.