Type I MHC Tetramers

1.Background

T-cell receptors (TCRs) expressed on human T cells specifically recognize and bind to complexes of HLA molecules with peptide epitopes (HLA/peptide complexes, pHLA). Effector CD8⁺ T cells recognize pHLA and directly attack and eliminate target cells such as virus-infected cells and cancer cells. Therefore, antigen-specific CD8⁺ T cells play pivotal roles in immune responses involved in autoimmune diseases, cancer, transplantation, infectious diseases, and allergy.

Within antigen-presenting cells (APCs), processed peptides are displayed on the cell surface by HLA molecules as HLA/peptide complexes, which are recognized by TCRs to activate T cells. Based on this principle, HLA/peptide complexes can be used to detect antigen-specific T cells. However, when the HLA/peptide complex is in monomeric form, its affinity for the TCR is low and the interaction is unstable, making monomers impractical as detection tools. Biotinylating the HLA/peptide complex and tetramerizing the monomers with streptavidin yields stable tetramers that maintain durable binding to TCRs and can be used as effective detection reagents. HLA class I tetramers enable identification of antigen-specific CD8⁺ T-cell subsets by flow cytometry, supporting immunologists research works.

2.Product Options

Tiger Cellular Remedy's HLA class I tetramer reagents (as listed in the table below) can be custom-prepared using cataloged HLA class I alleles and peptides that form stable complexes with the corresponding HLA molecules. Fluorophore options include PE, APC, and FITC.

3.Results

Tiger Cellular Remedy class I MHC tetramer successfully labelling antigen specific CD8 T cells, while our multimer would label T cells whose TCRs are of lower affinities.