Objective

In vitro bioassays can be developed to analyse the effect of new candidate therapeutics on immune cells. Mixed lymphocyte Reaction (MLR), antigen-specific recall activation assay or CD3/CD28 activation assays with human T cells are models that mimic a physiological T cell responses. These kinds of assays can be used in the development phase to screen the functionality of new candidate therapeutics such as immune checkpoint blocking antibodies.

Recently the increasing interest in the tumour microenvironment leads to focus on new bioassays to represent all the players of the cancer immune response like T cell activation assays in the presence of tumour cells, myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) or regulatory T cells (Treg) or the study of Tumour Associated Macrophages (TAM).

An important factor for sensitive and reproducible assays and consistent results is the quality of the primary immune cells. PBMC are isolated and cryopreserved shortly after blood redrawn. All donor preparations are quality controlled and HLA typed and optimized procedures are used to generate functional subpopulations such as dendritic cells and T cell subpopulations. Next to that, in vitro assays need to be optimised and fine-tuned for the screening of certain types of molecules and the use of different specific subpopulations of immune cells.