{
  "id": 12908193,
  "title": "Programmable antigen-presenting scaffolds expand rare tumor-antigen-specific T cells from peripheral blood",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/08/programmable-antigen-presenting-scaffolds-expand-rare-tumor-antigen",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-08T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.05.756899v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Adoptive cellular therapies have shown promise in treating solid tumors, but they depend on discovering and expanding rare tumor-reactive T cells (TRTs) in a patient's peripheral blood. Researchers have developed antigen-presenting cell-mimetic scaffolds (APC-ms), which are modular biomaterial platforms presenting specific peptide-HLA and co-stimulatory ligands on a lipid bilayer. This design selectively recovers rare antigen-specific T cells from peripheral blood.\n\nBy adjusting the peptide-HLA, co-stimulatory ligands, and cytokine support, researchers optimized a formulation that enriched MART-1-specific T cells to over 2% of CD8+ T cells in 35 of 50 healthy donors with HLA-A*02:01. When compared to another method using dendritic cells (mo-DCs), APC-ms showed greater expansion of MART-1-specific T cells while maintaining an early differentiation phenotype and generating more MART-1-specific clonotypes.\n\nIn clinical trials with melanoma patients, APC-ms successfully enriched MART-1-specific T cells in five out of eight individuals, reaching a median frequency of 13.7% of CD8+ cells (range: 0.30 - 57.2%). Furthermore, APC-ms was able to expand T cells specific for an HLA-A*24:01-restricted personal neoantigen that were previously undetectable in a patient's peripheral blood. These findings demonstrate that APC-ms is a versatile platform for recovering rare TRTs from peripheral blood, paving the way for its future use in therapeutic TCR discovery and personalized adoptive cell therapies.",
  "summary": "Adoptive cellular therapies can be effective against solid tumors but rely on the identification and expansion of rare tumor-reactive T cells (TRTs). Here, we utilize antigen-presenting cell-mimetic scaffolds (APC-ms), a modular biomaterial platform that presents defined peptide-HLA and co-stimulatory ligands on a fluid lipid bilayer to selectively recover rare antigen-specific T cells from…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}