Search

[Abstract] Different vaccine and adjuvant combinations are known to rapidly induce antigen presenting cell (APC) maturation and pro-inflammatory cytokine and production, which in turn play an important role in the priming of antigen-specific T cells. Measuring cytokine production systemically in the serum fails to detect localized responses in the lymph nodes draining a subcutaneous immunization site. On the other hand, stimulating APC with vaccine formulations in vitro lacks the complexity of the lymph node microenvironment and the presence of other in vivo factors. Here we analyse cytokine production directly in vaccine draining lymph nodes (dLN) extracted early after in vivo vaccination. To do this we perform cytokine multiplex analysis of supernatants from whole dLN cell suspensions following a brief ex vivo incubation.

[Abstract] Measuring antigen-specific T cell responses in the blood and lymphoid organs of vaccinated mice can give us a useful indication of the potency of a vaccine formulation. Unfortunately, systemic or even localized lymphoid T cell responses are not always predictive of the ability of a vaccine to induce tumor protection. Measuring the antigen-specific T cell response within the tumor infiltrating lymphocytes is a more accurate indicator or vaccine efficacy. However, multi-parameter flow cytometric analysis of T cells isolated from tumor tissue can be quite challenging due to the over-whelming number of tumor cells present in relation to the tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and to problems associated to the large and adhesive nature of many tumor cell. Here we take advantage of a pre-flow separation of CD45 + leukocytes from the tumor tissue using the MACS magnetic cell sorting system, resulting in a much cleaner cell preparation with which to proceed to flow cytometric staining and analysis.