Dear Varshiesh,

there are transgenic animals like the F5TCR on a Rag1-/- background that all lymphocytes in their body are T lymphocytes recognizing their cognate antigen (in this case a peptide) and you can activate all the T cells by injecting synthetic peptide.

It is amazing because is very fast and all the cells respond at once (see figure 2 of the following manuscript): http://www.jimmunol.org/content/170/6/2877.long

You may also get it from my profile as Sanjuan et al., 2003.

I believe that this is the most efficient way. The mice I mentioned only possess CD8+ T cells, but there are models for CD4+ also.

Best

Jose A.

Dear Varshiesh,

you seem to be asking for chemicals or mitogens to do your experiment. But if I understand your goal is to observe the effect of your compound X in the normal activation of T cells. Using chemicals is not a normal context and might put you on a wrong track.

As advised by Mr Garcia-Sanz, transgenic models are more suitable. In your case, probably the good old OT-I and OT-II or DO11.10 mice should do. Their T cells are specific for the Ovalbumin peptide, therefore, you can activate them with Ovalbumin, simply. In your case, you would inject your compound in advance (1h, to 1 day depending what it is) and then stimulate the mice with ovalbumin by the adequate route (i.v., i.p....). This will cause activation of your T cells and comparison with mice not injected with your compound will show its effect.

I am sure that you'll find a suitable model in these mice through Pubmed. Good luck!

Thanks Jose Garcia-Sanz and philippe. I appreciate your suggestions and will look into the details of it. However, Philippe i would like to correct you at one place that i am not studying the effect of my compound X on T Cell activation. Instead of i want to study the regulation of my protein during T Cell activation. Due to limitations of transgenic mice in my laboratory, i was looking whether there is any drug that can be used to activate T Cells in-vivo.

Thanks and regards to both of you.

Ok, then, it will be less obvious, as most chemicals have the potential to affect other cells, it might be problematic in vivo. The best reference I can think of for you is:

Current protocols in immunology, module 3.12. But you might also be interested to do it in vitro (if it is not done already!) as it is more handy and can allow you to investigate individual proteins levels also. In any case, good luck!

Dear Varshiesh,

I think you can inject LPS and IL-1b in mice which have been shown to induce T cells in mice. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/17/7119.full

I would suggest using Concanavalin A in small proportions to activate spleen cells http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/300500

If you cannot use transgenics a decent way to activate in vivo (I would prefer it to con A, LPS+IL1 etc) is to do an MLR reaction. Actually if you need a significant fraction of cells responding you could do a secondary MLR reaction.

You inject lymphocytes from one strain into another (i.e. Balb/c into C57BL/6) wait for 3-4 weeks that the primary reaction goes down, and then do the secondary reaction (inject it back). Depending of the timings (when your protein appears) you can irradiate the Balb/c cells to make sure that they do not respond. There you will get a nice and quantifiable response.