Cell activation assay

Biological drugs can have an immunomodulatory effect as part of their mode of action or be immunogenic, either of which can cause safety issues or modulate the drug’s therapeutic effect. It is therefore essential to know how your drug affects the immune system from both a safety and a functional perspective. Immuneed performs phenotypical analysis of all blood cell populations and subpopulations to analyze cell activation and depletion profiles. This includes neutrophils, monocytes, granulocytes, B-cells, T-cells, NK cells, platelets, and red blood cells. If you are interested in looking at the proliferation or differentiation of cells in the presence of your drug, we also offer to complement PBMC assays. If you are unsure which blood cells your drug binds to, our platform (ID.Flow) also provides a unique opportunity to track the binding of different blood cell populations simultaneously.

“Our lab team has vast experience in flow cytometry analyzing Neutrophils, Monocytes, Granulocytes, B-cells T-cells, NK cells Platelets and, Red blood cells.”

Cell binding by ID.Flow

Freshly acquired whole blood was incubated with anti-integrin alpha 4  (2 µg/ml) or vehicle usingID.Flow. Blood was acquired directly after collection (zero time point) and at the 4-hour time point was stained with fluorescently labeled monoclonal antibodies to detect: erythrocytes (CD235ab+, CD45-), platelets (CD41+, CD45-), T cells (CD3+), B cells (CD19+), NK cells (CD56+), monocytes (CD14+) and granulocytes (CD66b+).

Cell activation profiles by ID.Flow

The graphs to the left show data from one of our studies on fresh blood from healthy donors, where the effect of two different antibodies was studied. One of the antibodies targets CD52 and induces activation of T-cells and monocytes. The other antibody targets EGFR, and does not induce activation of T-cells or monocytes and thus displays an activation profile similar to the vehicle buffer.