Immuno-monitoring

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The immune-monitoring platform, developed by Dr. Craig Fenwick, has as its principal goals to identify the immunological profiles associated with different infectious agents, disease states, cancers, and induced by registered and experimental vaccines. Profiling consists of phenotypic identification, characterization of cellular activation states, cell fate evaluation, functionality, phosphosignaling and transcriptomic characterization of immune cells and tissues. The platform achieves its goals through the implementation of established and emerging analysis technologies for phenotypic, functional and genetic characterization of immune cells and through quantitative analysis of serum cytokine and chemokine levels as markers of inflammation, infection and disease.

Technologies implemented include CyTOF mass cytometry, for in depth characterization of cellular phenotype and function with over 50 difference cellular markers evaluated simultaneously, flow cytometry for phenotypic and functional profiling of live cells, cell sorting for the isolation of specific cell populations and gene expression analysis at the single cell levels using Seq-Well gene expression analysis. The immune-monitoring platform has developed highly validated antibody panels for characterizing immune cells from patients at the hospital including those with suspected immunodeficiencies or those undergoing cancer therapy. Specialized antibody panels were also designed to support valuable research studies to investigate immunological implications of specific diseases, identify related cellular biomarkers and identify the cellular targets and mechanism of action associated with specific vaccines and therapies.

The immune-monitoring platform focuses on the implementation of established and cutting edge technologies for the in depth characterization of the immune response associated with different infectious agents, disease states, cancers, and induced by registered and experimental vaccines. This goal is achieved through:

1. Profiling of cellular immune markers by CyTOF mass cytometry using highly validated panels of up to 50 difference cellular markers evaluated simultaneously
2. Functional characterization of both adaptive and innate immune responses through intracellular staining of cytokines in response to activation with peptide antigens, T or B cell specific stimulations, vaccines or TLR agonists
3. Profiling of immune cell specific phosphosignaling events associated with immune activation in vivo through vaccination, infection or a specific disease state and in vitro stimulations
4. Expanding validation of antibody panels, multiplexing capabilities and associated reagents