Mabtech FluoroSpot in Vaccine Research | CAVA Lab

Clinical trial samples are precious, particularly when researchers need to investigate multiple aspects of the immune response from a limited number of cells.

At RMIT University’s Cancer, Ageing and Vaccines Laboratory (CAVA Lab), researchers are using the Mabtech FluoroSpot FLEX: Human IFN-γ/IL-10 assay to simultaneously investigate different T cell responses following COVID-19 immunisation. By measuring two cytokines from the same sample, the team can gain more information while conserving valuable clinical trial material.

Led by Distinguished Professor Magdalena Plebanski, the CAVA Lab uses insights from immunology to address health needs across cancer, vaccination and healthy ageing.

The laboratory’s research spans several areas, including improving the early detection and personalised treatment of ovarian cancer, developing new immunotherapies and gold-based compounds, and investigating how ageing, gender, diet and mood influence the immune system.

Vaccination is another major area of focus. Researchers within the CAVA Lab are working to improve COVID-19 and influenza vaccines for vulnerable populations, including older adults and pregnant women. The team uses ‘omics’ approaches to profile immunity across multiple large-scale human clinical trials and is also developing synthetic nanoparticle vaccines using novel nanoparticle and adjuvant combinations.

One area of the CAVA Lab’s research focuses on understanding T cell responses following COVID-19 immunisation.

Two cytokines of interest are IFN-γ and IL-10. The team uses IFN-γ production as an indicator of CD4 Th1 and CD8 Tc1 responses, while IL-10 indicates Tr1 activity. Measuring both therefore allows researchers to investigate different aspects of the T cell response.

The challenge is that clinical trial samples can provide a limited number of cells, making it important to maximise the information generated from every sample.

The CAVA Lab has a long-standing connection with ELISpot, with Distinguished Professor Plebanski having been involved in pioneering the assay.

For its current research, the team selected the Mabtech FluoroSpot FLEX: Human IFN-γ/IL-10 assay because it enables both cytokines to be measured simultaneously from the same sample.

This multiplex capability is particularly valuable when working with human clinical trial material, where every sample matters.

Using alternative methods, the CAVA Lab may need to measure IFN-γ and IL-10 separately. That can create a practical challenge when researchers are unable to recover enough cells from clinical samples to run multiple individual analyses.

FluoroSpot allows the team to investigate both cytokines simultaneously. As the CAVA Lab explains:

For the team, the ability to detect multiple cytokines simultaneously has been one of the most valuable aspects of the assay because clinical trial samples are precious and irreplaceable.

Rather than dividing a limited sample across separate cytokine measurements, multiplex FluoroSpot enables the researchers to extract more information from the cells available to them.

The CAVA Lab is currently applying the Mabtech IFN-γ/IL-10 FluoroSpot assay as part of the PICOBOO clinical trial. The PICOBOO T cell study team is led by Dr. Kirsty Wilson, who together with Dr. Monica Prakash and Ms. Georgia Goodchild has created an optimised workflow to test T cell responses to multiple target peptide epitopes in vaccines.

Within this research, FluoroSpot provides the team with a practical way to investigate IFN-γ and IL-10 responses while conserving limited clinical samples. The ability to examine both cytokines simultaneously supports the laboratory’s broader goal of understanding immune responses following COVID-19 immunisation.

For the CAVA Lab, the value of Mabtech FluoroSpot comes down to making better use of an irreplaceable resource: clinical trial samples.

By simultaneously detecting IFN-γ and IL-10, the assay reduces the number of cells required compared with measuring each analyte separately and enables the researchers to investigate multiple aspects of T cell immunity from the same sample.

For researchers working with limited samples and looking to investigate multiple cytokines at the single-cell level, Mabtech FluoroSpot provides a multiplex approach to getting more information from every sample.

Talk to the Millennium Science team about Mabtech FluoroSpot assays and how they could fit into your experimental workflow.