Mabtech AB – Enzyme-Linked Immunospot
1st January 2008
In 1998 Isis issued a licence to Mabtech AB, Stockholm, Sweden, for development and marketing of an enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISpot) assay technique capable of detecting peptide-specific effector T cells.
Mabtech AB – Enzyme-Linked Immunospot
Using this assay, T cells which have been primed in vivo to a specific peptide -for example, recognition of a processed antigen – can be quantitated ex vivo by detecting interferon gamma release by individual T cells.
The test aids the design of new protein-based vaccines by identifying antigens that are targets of protein immune responses, and is playing an important role in evaluating the immunogenicity of candidate vaccines in clinical trials. Typically, the efficacy with which a given candidate is able to generate a cytotoxic T cell lymphocyte (CT) response can be assessed by administering the vaccine, then directly testing the ability of blood-borne CTL’s to release interferon gamma in the presence of a range of small peptides derived from the candidate antigen, i.e. those peptides likely to represent CD8+ epitopes recruited to the surface of antigen-presenting cells by HLA molecules, in a four-hour assay.
For other potential applications, the level of circulating activated effector T cells to specific peptides may need to be suppressed, as in certain autoimmune diseases. Accordingly, the peptide specificity of particularly prevalent T cell populations can be identified using this assay, and appropriate therapeutic means applied, for example by induction of tolerance, in efforts to reduce the offending cell population.
The Mabtech AB technology was developed by Ajit Lalvani and Roger Brookes at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.
Press release sign up
