0000000000610060
AUTHOR
S.h. Van Der Burg
T cell assays and MIATA: the essential minimum for maximum impact.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA*Correspondence: cedrik.britten@tron-mainz.dehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2012.07.010The field of immunology has recentlyexperienced enormous advances fromwhich most have so far not been incorpo-rated into standard medical practice (Da-vis, 2008). One approach to fully exploitthe existing wealth of knowledge is toimplement a systematic strategy to eval-uate the immune system. The potentialbenefit of such an approach is that itmay lead to results that can be translatedinto the rational development of diagnos-tics and therapeutics (Hoos et al., 2011).Two prerequisites for its application ar…
Generation of TCR-engineered reference cell samples to control T-cell assay performance
In vitro cellular assays analyzing antigen-specific T cells are characterized by their high complexity and require controlled conditions to lower experimental variations. Without standard cellular reagents, it is difficult to compare results over time and across institutions. To overcome this problem, a simple and robust technology was developed to generate TCR-engineered reference samples (TERS) containing defined numbers of antigen-specific T cells. Utilization of TERS enables performance control of three main T-cell assays: MHC-peptide multimer staining, IFN-gamma ELISpot and cytokine flow cytometry. TERS continuously deliver stable results and can be stored for longer periods of time. H…