Immune synapse

The purpose of creating artificial construct engraftment strategies using TCR T cells, CAR T cells, and bispecific antibodies is to redirect the immune cells. However, to properly achieve this, scientists need to get a proper understanding of the molecular mechanisms that take place at the cell-cell interface between cancer and immune cells during immune cell activation. The structural or procedural differences in CAR-mediated and bsAb–mediated immunological synapse from the conventional TCR-mediated immunological synapse will likely alter the nature of the resulting signaling and the eventual therapeutic T cell responses. Therefore, looking into the binding events across the immunological synapse is a crucial step to accelerate cell therapy development. ​ ​

A tool to measure the total intercellular binding strength beyond the single-receptor interactions between cancer cells and immune cells across the immunological synapse is called Cell Avidity analysis. Incorporating Cell Avidity not only provides insights into the biological complexity that is inherently linked to the immune cell function, but also helps researchers to identify the best immune cell candidates at an early stage. This early selection can improve the clinical success rate, and reduce costs and save time by reducing the use of in vivo mouse models.