NEW YORK (Dispatches) -- Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a new tool to help them tease out the immune system’s mysteries.
These scientists cultured human B and T cells inside a microfluidic Organ Chip device and coaxed them to spontaneously form functional lymphoid follicles -- structures that reside in lymph nodes and other parts of the human body which mediate immune responses. They consist of different chambers that harbor “naïve” B cells and T cells, which together initiate the cascade of events that leads to a full immune response when they are exposed to a specific antigen.
These lymphoid follicle (LF) Chips can also be used to predict immune responses to various vaccines and help select the best performers, offering significant improvement over existing preclinical models like cells in a dish and non-human primates.
The team also found that B cells within the LFs that self-assembled on-chip also expressed an enzyme called activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), which is critical for activating B cells against specific antigens and is not present in B cells that are circulating in the blood.
The LF Chip replicated human immune responses to both pathogens and a commercial influenza vaccine in vitro, offering significant improvement over existing preclinical models like cells in a dish and non-human primates.