Sensitive detection of human papillomavirus type 16 E7-specific T cells by ELISPOT after multiple in vitro stimulations of CD8+ T cells with peptide-pulsed autologous dendritic cells

Cervical cancer is the second most common gynecological cancer amongst women world-wide. Despite optimized protocols, standard treatments still face several disadvantages. Therefore, research aims at the development of immune-based strategies using tumor antigen-loaded dendritic cells for the induction of cellular anti-tumor immunity.

We show that peptide-pulsed mature dendritic cells are able to stimulate a HPV type 16 E7 peptide-specific immune response in vitro. These experiments describe an efficient culture protocol for antigen-specific T cells for use in pre-clinical vaccination research and confirm the need for sensitive T cell assays for detection of tumor-specific immune responses in vitro.

In this study, we used dendritic cells loaded with the HLA-A2-restricted HPV type 16 E711-20 peptide in order to induce an in vitro CD8+ T cell response. For this purpose, peptide-pulsed dendritic cells were co-cultured with autologous CD8+ T cells. After 5 weekly stimulations with peptide-pulsed mature dendritic cells, cultured T cells were analyzed for antigen specificity by an IFN-gamma ELISPOT assay. Using this ELISPOT assay, we were able to detect E7-specific IFN-gamma-secreting CD8+ T cells in 5/5 healthy donors.