IMMUNE CELL FUNCTION

Determine the function of immune cells in your samples

If you are interested in determining the function of human immune cells in your area of research, you have come to the right place. HIMSR has developed and optimized protocols that allow us to stimulate immune cells directly ex vivo or from frozen samples. The functional readout can be assessed by either flow cytometry, mass cytometry, ELISA of supernatants, or ELISpot. Let us know if you are interested in help with these assays or developing others. Log into iLabs for service fees.

Stimulate immune cells from fresh whole blood:
We use the SMART tube base station to provide consistency when stimulating blood cells from different patients or at different times during their treatment. Researchers can normalize samples by staining the stimulated, fixed, or frozen samples on the same day. We typically stimulate fresh blood samples for a for 30 minutes or 6 hours. HIMSR has developed panels for flow and mass cytometry to analyze the cell’s production of functional cytokines and expression of various proteins with and without stimulation.

If you are interested in a specific cytokine or marker that is not on the list, we will work with you to customize your panel to suit your research needs. Simply send us the blood and we will do the rest of the work for you.

Stimulation of fresh or frozen PBMCs with mitogens or peptides:
We provide the flexibility of customizing and optimizing your stimulation assays. For example, we can stimulate PBMCs ex vivo in tubes or in 96-well plates. We can then stain and analyze the cells using flow and/or mass cytometry techniques. Supernatants can be assayed for functional cytokines using MSD technology or ELISA.

Death (killing), proliferation, and morphologic changes of unlabeled cells in real time:
Using the Incucyte Cell Analyzer in the Cell Technologies Shared Resource, we can provide T cell, NK cell, or CAR-T killing assays of unlabeled cells.

ELISpot
We offer ELISpot assays to evaluate the cytokine production of your T cells after stimulation with specific peptides. This assay will determine what antigens your T cells respond or do not respond to.

Image Credit:  https://www.rndsystems.com/products/elispot-assay-principle