Combined megaplex TCR isolation and SMART-based real-time quantitation methods for quantitating antigen-specific T cell clones in mycobacterial infection

Despite recent advances in measuring cellular immune responses, the quantitation of antigen-specific T cell clones in infections or diseases remains challenging. Here, we employed combined megaplex TCR isolation and SMART-based real-time quantitation methods to quantitate numerous antigen-specific T cell clones using limited amounts of specimens. The megaplex TCR isolation covered the repertoire comprised of recombinants from 24 Vβ families and 13 Jβ segments, and allowed us to isolate TCR VDJ clonotypic sequences from one or many PPD-specific IFNγ-producing T cells that were purified by flow cytometry sorting. The SMART amplification technique was then validated for its capacity to proportionally enrich cellular TCR mRNA/cDNA for real-time quantitation of large numbers of T cell clones. SMART amplified cDNA was shown to maintain relative expression levels of TCR genes when compared to unamplified cDNA. While the SMART-based real-time quantitative PCR conferred a detection limit of 10− 5 to 10− 6 antigen-specific T cells, the clonotypic primers specifically amplified and quantitated the target clone TCR but discriminated other clones that differed by ≥ 2 bases in the DJ regions. Furthermore, the combined megaplex TCR isolation and SMART-based real-time quantiation methods allowed us to quantitate large numbers of PPD-specific IFNγ-producing T cell clones using as few as 2 × 106 PBMC collected weekly after mycobacterial infection. This assay system may be useful for studies of antigen-specific T cell clones in tumors, autoimmune and infectious diseases.