{"id":242662,"date":"2026-08-13T10:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/peptidemhctargeted-engineered-viruslike-particles-enable-selective-priming-and-gene-editing-of-tumorspecific-t-cells"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:18:18","slug":"peptidemhctargeted-engineered-viruslike-particles-enable-selective-priming-and-gene-editing-of-tumorspecific-t-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/peptidemhctargeted-engineered-viruslike-particles-enable-selective-priming-and-gene-editing-of-tumorspecific-t-cells","title":{"rendered":"PeptideMHCtargeted engineered viruslike particles enable selective priming and gene editing of tumorspecific T cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/peptidemhctargeted-engineered-viruslike-particles-enable-selective-priming-and-gene-editing-of-tumorspecific-t-cells.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As well as T cells bearing an engineered TCR55-A50E, which forms catch-bonds with both HIVpol\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 pMHC and Pep20\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 pMHC. We treated TCR55 and TCR55-A50E cells with pMHC-eVLPs pseudotyped with either HIV\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 or Pep20\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 and subsequently assessed T cell activation by CD69 upregulation and eVLP transduction. Consistent with previous reports, we observed increased CD69 upregulation in TCR55 cells by Pep20\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 eVLPs compared to HIV\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 eVLPs, whereas TCR55-A50E cells were similarly activated by both pMHC-eVLPs (Figure S4G). Notably, pMHC-eVLPs presenting HIV\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 were still able to induce CD69 upregulation on TCR55 cells despite reported slip-bond formation (Figure S4G). Interestingly, both HIV\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 and Pep20\/B<sup>\u2217<\/sup>35 pMHC-eVLPs were able to efficiently transduce both TCR55 and TCR55-A50E cells (Figure S4H), suggesting that antigen specificity and physiological TCR\u00b7pMHC affinity, rather than catch-bond formation, are the primary determinants of pMHC-eVLP-mediated T cell activation and transduction.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively, these findings demonstrate that the pMHC-eVLP platform can be programmed with different antigens and HLA allotypes to enable selective and efficient targeting of tumor-specific T cells via natural TCRs with physiological antigen affinities, and that pMHC-eVLPs induce antigen-specific T cell activation during TCR-mediated entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As well as T cells bearing an engineered TCR55-A50E, which forms catch-bonds with both HIVpol\/B\u221735 pMHC and Pep20\/B\u221735 pMHC. We treated TCR55 and TCR55-A50E cells with pMHC-eVLPs pseudotyped with either HIV\/B\u221735 or Pep20\/B\u221735 and subsequently assessed T cell activation by CD69 upregulation and eVLP transduction. Consistent with previous reports, we observed increased CD69 upregulation in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}