Conference Scene: How to Decipher Phenotype and Functions of the Immune Cell Compartment

Abstract

This event was a discussion forum where participants had a chance to explore the advantages and pitfalls of available techniques that measure cell-mediated immunity with experts. The evaluation of cell-mediated immune responses is pivotal in defining how the immune system reacts against pathogens and disease. This study requires the identification of the cell types/subsets involved, accurate quantification and kinetics of effector molecules, and detection of low-frequency reactive cells. Intracellular staining and flow cytometry allow the simultaneous assessment of multiple effector molecules, such as cytokines, and the phenotype in defined activated cell subsets. However, the timely assessment, especially after in vitro re-stimulation of cell samples, is hardly addressed. ELISA allows the accurate determination of multiple effector molecules, but information on their cellular origin is often sacrificed. The same could be said for the enzyme-linked immunospot assay, however, this technique allows for highly sensitive identification of actual cytokine secretion by antigen-specific T cells.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

L Ferrari is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Parma, Department of Veterinary Science, working on veterinary immunology and immunopathology. He is supervised by P Borghetti, P Martelli and A Corradi. L Ferrari worked as a visiting scientist at Cellular Technology Ltd (CTL), R&D Laboratory, Cleveland (OH, USA; www.immunospot.com) in 2011, on human immunology by using B-cell and T-cell ELISpot assays. He was supervised by PV Lehmann, W Zhang, R Caspell and A Edelmann. L Ferrari would like to acknowledge financial support for attendance at this meeting from EuroSciCon. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.