Towards a surrogate system to express human lipid binding TCRs.

Background: Previously we reported that natural nut lipids were necessary for sensitization and that natural killer T cells (NKTs) must play a critical role in the development of food allergic responses. A major bottleneck in further understanding the interaction of nut lipids with the cells of the human immune system is the lack of well-characterized lipid responsive human cell lines.

Objective: In the present study, we engineered human T cell receptor (TCR) sequences TRAV10 and TRBV25 responsive to α-GalCer into a stable murine iNKT hybridoma and surrogate human T cell lines.