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T lymphocytes play a central role in the pathogenesis of a large number of human conditions including autoimmunity and graft rejection Although T cells are key players in mounting immune responses the assessment of T cell repertoires has yet to find an important role in clinical decision making In this review we discuss the immunoscope technique and its potential diagnostic role in a variety of clinical scenarios This is an RT-PCR based approach that subdivides a bulk T cell population i e from blood lymph spleen or tissue into approximately 2800 groups based upon rearranged variable beta Vbeta joining beta Jbeta gene segments and the resulting length of the T cell receptor s TCR s third complementarity determining region CDR-3 This extensive subdivision or focusing allows clonal expansions to be directly observed Such a fine-tuned analysis has revealed previously unappreciated aspects of the T cell repertoire For instance an antigen-specific immune response can be divided into both public and non-public components The non-public repertoire contains the majority of the expanding T cells which are unique to the individual private or shared by only some semi-private while public T cells can be found responding to the antigenic determinant in every individual Although they are often a minority of the response the public T cell repertoire seems to play a more important role in defining as well as driving the overall immune phenotype in the animal Immunoscope analysis has identified public and non-public responses in human pathologies such as multiple sclerosis The ability to characterize the driver T cells dictating the state of immunity autoimmunity in individual patients will be an important step towards understanding autoimmunity and designing effective treatment for a variety of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis We review the current literature involving public and non-public repertoires and discuss the prospect that immunoscope analysis may play a central role in the study and perhaps the management of human autoimmune diseases and cancer

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Molecular characterization of the T cell repertoire using immunoscope analysis and its possible implementation in clinic...