Dextramer® – the Backbone of Precision Immune Monitoring

Obtain Results Unrivaled in Sensitivity and Specificity

The dextran backbone of Dextramer® reagents accommodates numerous peptide-MHC complexes and is optimized for detection. Thus, each molecule presents several options to bind cell receptors in a flexible configuration that promotes multivalent binding to increase avidity.

As a result, Dextramer® binding time is significantly longer than with other multimers. Dextramer® enables highly sensitive detection of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells - even with low affinity receptors or at low cell counts - helping researchers to uncover T-cell populations that other multimer technologies miss.

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Capture Low Affinity T cells

Low affinity T cells are critical components of the immune response¹. The range of TCR affinity also varies across different diseases. Tumour-specific T cells, autoimmune T cells, and MHC-II-restricted T cells tend to display TCRs that bind with low affinity².

Dextramer® captures T-cell populations that go undetected by conventional lower-order multimers such as tetramers. The rigid configuration of those reagents can interfere with binding dynamics, limiting the detection sensitivity that is critical when T-cell receptors have low affinity for the cognate pMHC.

Dextramer® technology does not have this limitation. Furthermore, with a high number of fluorophores per molecule, Dextramer® reagents also increase MFI, resulting in a clearer separation of the positive T cell population.

Dextramer® outperforms conventional multimers when TCR-pMHC affinity is low, which can be especially important when detecting CD4+ T cells (often rare and low affinity T cells).

Ultimately, Dextramer® enables you to detect T cells with both low affinity and high affinity TCRs, so you get the full picture of the cellular immune response.

Adapted from Dolton et al. 2014 (Ref. 3).

Direct Detection of Antigen-Specific T Cells

Techniques such as ELISpot (Enzyme-Linked Immunospot) quantify the number of antigen-specific immune cells by detecting cytokine or antibody secretion in response to in vitro stimulation. Hence, these methods detect activated cells which secrete cytokines or antibodies under stimulatory conditions.

Activated cells may not always be identical to antigen-specific cells.
Dextramer® staining directly detects antigen-specific T cells. In addition, you can easily stain with other surface or intracellular markers, enabling even deeper characterization of the T cell population.

Count on Reproducibility

Stringent quality standards are the hallmark of our manufacturing process. Every production lot undergoes meticulous scrutiny in-process and prior to release to minimize lot-to-lot variation.

The outcome is reproducible results, again and again. Two operators using ten different lots of MHC Dextramer® to detect CMV-specific T cells generated comparable cell counts.

We are committed to providing high quality reagents, simple protocols and outstanding support from start to finish, ensuring reliable and reproducible results.

dCODE Dextramer®

Adding a DNA barcode to the dextran backbone transforms Dextramer® technology into a powerful sequencing tool that efficiently screens multiple T-cell specificities in a single sample: dCODE Dextramer®. After binding antigen-specific T-cells, each population subset is identified by amplifying and sequencing their unique DNA barcode.

Use dCODE Dextramer® products for multi-omics and single-cell analysis, high-throughput screening, and a range of customized applications.

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Klickmer®

A version of Dextramer® technology where the backbone contains numerous agnostic acceptor sites that bind and display any biotinylated molecule. This multipurpose tool opens new possibilities to explore immunity, from sensitive detection of B cells to antigen presentation simulations, TCR-ligand interactions, unknown ligand identification, and isolation of highly specific cell populations.

Klickmer® combined with biotinylated molecules on one backbone expands the interrogation power of these probes even further.

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dCODE Klickmer®

To support novel applications and creative research approaches, dCODE Klickmer® merges the boosted avidity facilitated by the Dextramer® technology, the multiplexing capacity of dCODE Dextramer®, and the customized loading of Klickmer®.

These reagents are highly customizable, top-quality tools to investigate uncharted immune responses and new cell population subsets. Leverage complete flexibility to create the reagent that can tackle your specific research question.

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U-Load Dextramer® Technologies

Taking flexibility to new levels while retaining the stability and sensitivity of Dextramer® technology, U-Load Dextramer® binds and displays your self-assembled biotinylated MHC I or MHC II allele-peptide complex. Using U-Load Dextramer® Kits for flow cytometry or U-Load dCODE Dextramer® Kits for single-cell multi-omics analysis, easily make custom reagents directly in your lab to boost specificity and streamline sample screening.

Simply bind your peptide of choice to an exceptional selection of MHC allotypes and load the complex onto U-Load Dextramer® or U-Load dCODE Dextramer®.

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