T cell receptors for clinical therapy: in vitro assessment of toxicity risk

Adoptive therapy with T cell receptor (TCR)-engineered T cells has shown promising results in the treatment of patients with tumors, and the number of TCRs amenable for clinical testing is expanding rapidly. Notably, adoptive therapy with T cells is challenged by treatment-related side effects, which calls for cautious selection of target antigens and TCRs that goes beyond their mere ability to induce high T cell reactivity. Here, we propose a sequence of in vitro assays to improve selection of TCRs, and exemplify risk assessments of on-target as well as off-target toxicities using TCRs directed against Cancer Germline Antigens. The proposed panel of assays covers parameters considered key to safety, such as expression of target antigen in healthy tissues, determination of a TCR's recognition motif towards its cognate peptide, and TCR's cross-reactivity towards non-cognate peptides

Importance of electronic self-consistency in the TDDFT based treatment of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics

A mixed quantum-classical approach to simulate the coupled dynamics of electrons and nuclei in nanoscale molecular systems is presented. The method relies on a second order expansion of the Lagrangian in time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) around a suitable reference density. We show that the inclusion of the second order term renders the method a self-consistent scheme and improves the calculated optical spectra of molecules by a proper treatment of the coupled response. In the application to ion-fullerene collisions, the inclusion of self-consistency is found to be crucial for a correct description of the charge transfer between projectile and target. For a model of the photoreceptor in retinal proteins, nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations are performed and reveal problems of TDDFT in the prediction of intra-molecular charge transfer excitations.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Minor changes in content wrt older versio

Twin-plate Ice Nucleation Assay (TINA) with infrared detection for high-throughput droplet freezing experiments with biological ice nuclei in laboratory and field samples

For efficient analysis and characterization of biological ice nuclei under immersion freezing conditions, we developed the Twin-plate Ice Nucleation Assay (TINA) for high-throughput droplet freezing experiments, in which the temperature profile and freezing of each droplet is tracked by an infrared detector. In the fully automated setup, a couple of independently cooled aluminum blocks carrying two 96-well plates and two 384-well plates, respectively, are available to study ice nucleation and freezing events simultaneously in hundreds of microliter-range droplets (0.1–40&thinsp;µL). A cooling system with two refrigerant circulation loops is used for high-precision temperature control (uncertainty  &lt; 0.2&thinsp;K), enabling measurements over a wide range of temperatures ( ∼ &thinsp;272–233&thinsp;K) at variable cooling rates (up to 10&thinsp;K&thinsp;min−1).The TINA instrument was tested and characterized in experiments with bacterial and fungal ice nuclei (IN) from Pseudomonas syringae (Snomax®) and Mortierella alpina, exhibiting freezing curves in good agreement with literature data. Moreover, TINA was applied to investigate the influence of chemical processing on the activity of biological IN, in particular the effects of oxidation and nitration reactions. Upon exposure of Snomax® to O3 and NO2, the cumulative number of IN active at 270–266&thinsp;K decreased by more than 1 order of magnitude. Furthermore, TINA was used to study aqueous extracts of atmospheric aerosols, simultaneously investigating a multitude of samples that were pre-treated in different ways to distinguish different kinds of IN. For example, heat treatment and filtration indicated that most biological IN were larger than 5&thinsp;µm. The results confirm that TINA is suitable for high-throughput experiments and efficient analysis of biological IN in laboratory and field samples.</p

Lofar low-band antenna observations of the 3C 295 and boötes fields : Source counts and ultra-steep spectrum sources

© 2018 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Low Band observations of the Boötes and 3C 295 fields. Our images made at 34, 46, and 62 MHz reach noise levels of 12, 8, and 5 mJy beam-1, making them the deepest images ever obtained in this frequency range. In total, we detect between 300 and 400 sources in each of these images, covering an area of 17-52 deg2. From the observations, we derive Euclidean-normalized differential source counts. The 62 MHz source counts agree with previous GMRT 153 MHz and Very Large Array 74 MHz differential source counts, scaling with a spectral index of -0.7. We find that a spectral index scaling of -0.5 is required to match up the LOFAR 34 MHz source counts. This result is also in agreement with source counts from the 38 MHz 8C survey, indicating that the average spectral index of radio sources flattens toward lower frequencies. We also find evidence for spectral flattening using the individual flux measurements of sources between 34 and 1400 MHz and by calculating the spectral index averaged over the source population. To select ultra-steep spectrum (α < -1.1) radio sources that could be associated with massive high-redshift radio galaxies, we compute spectral indices between 62 MHz, 153 MHz, and 1.4 GHz for sources in the Boötes field. We cross-correlate these radio sources with optical and infrared catalogs and fit the spectral energy distribution to obtain photometric redshifts. We find that most of these ultra-steep spectrum sources are located in the 0.7 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 range.Peer reviewe