ELISPOT Testing
Are you using the appropriate readout system for your immunology assessments?
CTL’s greatest strength lies in its high-throughput T cell monitoring capabilities and world-class ELISPOT (Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Assay) expertise. Because of its years of experience in contracted research, many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have entrusted CTL with evaluating test subject responses to their vaccines, drugs and biologic products using the ELISPOT technique.
The ability to measure the response of T cells to antigens is vital for basic research, drug discovery, and management of a range of important diseases. ELISPOT testing is particularly useful in areas when measurement of low frequency T cell responses is required for the ex vivo readout of immune responses. The T cell readout at single-cell resolution is required to develop better understanding and treatment of allergies and autoimmunity, to predict rejection/acceptance responses in organ transplantation, for improvements in drug and vaccine development, and for monitoring various cancer treatments.
The ELISPOT technique allows researchers to generate secretory footprints in the form of colored spots within a 96-well plate. These images can then be scanned and counted, and readily evaluated for statistical significance. The ELISPOT method can thus be used to determine whether a patient population responds positively or negatively to a vaccine, drug or biologic product, and in addition, measure the extent of each person’s immune response. This test method opens the door for other means of data evaluation, such as:
- Testing T cell mediated immunity at a single-cell level for pre-clinical and clinical specimens
- Determinant mapping with overlapping peptides
- Measurement of cytotoxic T cell responses
- Measurement of B cell responses
- The ability to run multiple assays using a limited number of cells/specimens
- High-throughput testing capacity (~150 specimens per day, ~450 specimens per week)
CTL’s invaluable expertise encompasses a wide range of assay types, thanks to its experience in working with clients to optimize, qualify, and validate test methods for various test systems—human, monkey, mouse, rat, rabbit, pig, and more.