Patent ID: 8309312

Claim:
A method of detecting a specific CD8+T lymphocyte from a polyclonal T lymphocyte population obtained from a biological sample, said method comprising: (a) incubating the polyclonal T lymphocyte population, wherein each member of the polyclonal population comprises a T cell receptor molecule and a CD8 co-receptor molecule, with a multimer of class I MHC molecules, the multimer of class I MHC molecules comprising: (i) a streptavidin molecule; (ii) a plurality of modified HLA-A2 heavy chain molecules, said modified HLA-A2 heavy chain molecules having an alanine to valine substitution at amino acid position 245 in the α3 domain of each of the HLA-A2 heavy chain molecules, wherein each HLA-A2 heavy chain molecule is coupled to a biotin molecule and the biotin molecule is bound to the streptavidin molecule; (iii) a particular antigenic peptide that is specifically recognized by the T cell receptor molecule of the specific CD8+T lymphocyte; and (iv) beta-2 micro globulin; and (b) detecting the specific binding of the specific CD8+T lymphocyte to the multimer of class I MHC molecules.