Immunotherapy drugs and anti-viral treatments often work by stimulating the body’s immune system.

Assays are needed to understand the mechanisms of cell-mediated killing to help improve these treatments. Simple reagents, such as MTT, LDH, ATP, will generate live/dead data as general indicators of cellular metabolism but cannot distinguish between cell types. ELISAs often require cell lysis. 51Cr-release assays have regulatory issues and safety concerns when working with isotopes. Flow cytometry assays offer significant advantages over other methods by providing single-cell analysis and multiplexing of reagents. For example, ICT’s Basic and Total Cytotoxicity Kits are able to differentiate target cells when cultured with immune effector cells, and concurrently quantify live, necrotic, and apoptotic cells. In this presentation, we will discuss how to quantify cell-mediated cytotoxicity using flow cytometry.

Cell viability assaysCytotoxicity