3D Confinement-enabled Priming of Synaptic Activation Promotes Primary T Cell Expansion

The success of autologous cell therapy, which depends highly on T lymphocyte expansion efficiency, is often hindered by suboptimal interactions between T-cell receptors and peptide-MHC molecules. Here, we demonstrate 3D confinement-enabled priming of T cell-MHC immune synapse junctions based on cytoskeletal forces within minutes, which is 200-fold faster than conventional 24 h bulk shaking method. Using T cell-Dynabead binding skeletons in the starting culture, two- to six-fold greater T cell expansion was achieved over the conventional T cell expansion approach without inducing excessive cell exhaustion. Under 3D force-confinement, T-cell division (G1, S, and G2 phases) was increased to be twice as fast. Creating 3D T cell-Dynabead skeletons as the "booster" material enables highly efficient T cell expansion, without requiring complex surface modification of antigen-presenting cells. This method can be modularly adapted to existing T cell expansion processes for a wide range of applications including adoptive cell therapies. Teaser3D confinement-enabled priming of synaptic activation enables radically faster autologous cell production.