Subjects will have blood draws at the following timepoints: Pre-op, 1-2 days post-op, 3-5 days post-op, and 1-4 months post-op. At each timepoint, three 8.5mL ACD (yellow top) vacutainer tubes will be drawn by the Biobank and Translational Research Core (BRTC), study personnel, or hospital phlebotomists. The blood will be processed for PBMC isolation by BRTC for Dr. Weinhold's laboratory and will be viable within 8 hours of draw. These timepoints for blood draws are at the same time as usual operative care and will not require additional visits on the part of the subject.
For this study we will extensively utilize several polychromatic flow cytometry (PFC) platforms to follow activation, maturation, exhaustion, and proliferation patterns within CD4+ and CD8+ subsets of T-cells. We will also utilize an intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) platform in efforts to detect anti-tumor associated antigen (TAA) responses by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) as well as lymphocytes infiltrating the patient's tumor. These assays are designed to measure antigen-driven intracellular production of IFN-γ, TNF-α, and IL-2, as well as the degranulation marker CD107. This strategy enables us to not only document individual cytokine responses, but to also assess (through Boolean gating) changes in relative polyfunctionality of the responses.
