Abstract 2600: Development of TCR-stimulating 300.19 and 300.19-hB7-1 cells using modified anti-CD3 scFv constructs

Abstract To facilitate immunological assays which require T cell activation, we made two membrane anchored anti-CD3 single chain fragment variable (scFv) constructs: one named Steinberger (St, which includes the hTIM-3 mucin domain as linker and medium strength human PGK promoter) and the other named Riley (Ri, which includes hCD8 stem as linker and weaker human UBC promoter). Isolating T cells activated using adherent CHO-TCR-Activator cells is labor intensive, results in variable amounts of CHO cells, and makes it difficult to examine early time points after TCR activation. To combat this issue, we established stable expressing cell lines by transfecting St and Ri into 300.19 cells (Abelson leukemia virus transformed murine pre-B cell line that grows as non-adherent single cells) as well as 300.19 cells stably transfected with hB7-1 and selected 300.19-hB7-1-St, 300.19-hB7-1-Ri, 300.19-St, and 300.19-Ri using the following procedures. We electroporated 300.19 and 300.19-hB7-1 cells with three different amounts of St and Ri linearized plasmid: 0.5µg, 5µg, and 50µg. After selection for resistant cells with hygromycin and puromycin, we stained each cell line with goat anti-mouse IgG (Fab2-specific)-Alexa647 and sorted into three levels of scFv expression (high, medium, and low) and cultured single cell clones. We tested the T cell-stimulatory capacities of our anti-CD3 cells in a Jurkat T cell model through assay of increased IL-2 promoter mediated transcription of luciferase compared to control and ranked the stimulatory capacity of each clone. We found that T cell ligation by 300-hB7-1-Ri and 300-hB7-1-St cells induced the highest IL-2 promoter luciferase reporter activity while the 300-Ri and 300-St induced significant but lesser amounts. Surprisingly, Ri construct cells were generally stronger than the St clones though the literature says the PGK promoter (St plasmid) is stronger than the UBC promoter (Ri plasmid). This difference in stimulatory capacity may be due to the Ri construct (scFv-CD8 linker) being more stable than the St construct (scFv-hTIM3 linker) or to different promoter activity in mouse pre-B cells. Our results also suggest that the amount of DNA transfected may be predictive of construct expression level. The TCR-engaging capacity of our cell lines makes them a widely applicable tool in cancer immunotherapy research. These cells improve the TCR-engaging assay technique by avoiding the use of adherent CHO-TCR-Activator cells and/or CD28 antibodies. Collectively, our anti-CD3 scFv construct-expressing cells may enable researchers to better understand the cascading processes involved in T cell proliferation and differentiation into effector T cells, assess the dynamics of co-stimulatory and co-inhibitory receptors under various controlled levels of T cell stimulation, and understand tumor microenvironments and cytokine production with and without CD28 co-stimulation. Citation Format: Melissa T. Bu, Baogong Zhu, Gordon J. Freeman. Development of TCR-stimulating 300.19 and 300.19-hB7-1 cells using modified anti-CD3 scFv constructs [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 2600.