MHC Tetramer

MHC Tetramers have emerged as an important tool for characterization of the specificity and phenotype of T cell immune response, useful in a large variety of disease and vaccine studies. Peptide-MHC multimers display an antigenic peptide in the MHC binding groove, functioning as a surrogate for recognition events that occur as part of the T cell interaction with antigen-presenting cell. The most prevalent form of multimer in use today consists of biotin-labeled pMHC displayed on streptavidin molecules, forming tetravalent complexes; so the common use of the term “tetramers” for this detection method. Since first description, MHC tetramers have become widely used for quantitation of antigen-specific T cell response. When coupled with methods that predict peptide binding to MHC molecules, tetramer analysis can be extremely useful for identifying T cell epitopes. Specifically, the application of Class I tetramers to study self antigens has also extensively developed in studies of tumor antigens. To sum up, MHC tetramer is a promising tool for research in immunology.