Computational and experimental optimization of T cell activation

Bead-based activation is widely-used for ex vivo expansion of T cells for either research or clinical purposes. Despite its wide use, culture conditions that can potentially affect the efficiency of bead-based T cell activation has not been extensively documented. With the help of computationally-driven experimental investigations of basic culturing factors, we found that culture density, bead-to-cell ratio, and debeading time can have a major impact on the efficiency of bead-based T cell activation for short-term cultures. Furthermore, discrepancies across expected and observed activation efficiencies helped discover interesting artifacts of bead-based T cell activation.\n\n\n\nO_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=152 SRC=\"FIGDIR/small/629857v1_ufig1.gif\" ALT=\"Figure 1\">\nView larger version (104K):\norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@107140corg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1b52475org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@16c95cborg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1de5184_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG Human primary T cells were imaged together with activation beads at 20X magnification after three hours of culturing at varying confluencies and bead-to-cell ratios.\n\nC_FIG