Researchers headed by a team at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison, and the Morgridge Institute for Research, have developed a novel label-free imaging technique that exploits autofluorescence in cells to differentiate between active and off-duty T cells, at the single cell level. They suggest the technology, known as autofluorescence lifetime imaging, could be used to help evaluate T cell involvement in immunotherapies for cancer treatment or autoimmune diseases. “It’s super novel,” said the Morgridge Institute’s Melissa Skala, PhD, who is also an associate professor of biomedical engineering at UW-Madison. “Most people aren’t using these techniques—you don’t see a lot of autofluorescence studies in immunology.”

Reporting on development and tests with the technology in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the researchers commented, “Autofluorescence lifetime imaging can be used to characterize T cells in vivo in preclinical models, in clinical applications including small blood samples (such as pediatric samples) in which antibody labeling is limited, or in cultured T cells, such as those used in biomanufactured T-cell therapies.” Their paper is titled, “Classification of T-cell activation via autofluorescence lifetime imaging… Continue reading.