High throughput CAR-T cell function verification in microfluidic picodroplets

Over the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in cell therapy as a strategy to harness the immune system to fight tumors. Technologies include reprogramming of T cells collected from patients to produce personalized medicines. T-cell therapy capitalizes on the body’s immune systems ability to recognize and kill tumor cells. This ability can be lost or overwhelmed as a cancer develops. By extracting and manipulating a patient’s T-cells, the ability to attack cancer cells can potentially be restored. Rapid, accurate assays to qualify the potency of the engineered T-cells against the target tumor cell are required to support the effective and efficient development of therapeutics. In this application note, Sphere Bio presents a new picodroplet-based approach for the functional validation of CAR-T cells. The easy-to-use and robust method combines the benefits of Sphere Fluidics’ high-throughput picodroplet technology with a granzyme B assay for studying cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Engineered T cells and target cells are co-encapsulated in picolitre-volume aqueous droplets (picodroplets) in an oil emulsion, along with granzyme B substrate. Granzyme B release by the T cell, a readout of the cells ability to recognize and kill the cancer cell, can be captured to determine the level of potential anti-cancer activity. In doing so, this method enables rapid cell product efficacy readouts to streamline the QC release of cell product.