Optimization and validation of an 8-color intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) assay to quantify antigen-specific T cells induced by vaccination

H Horton, EP Thomas, JA Stucky, I Frank… - Journal of …, 2007 - Elsevier
Candidate HIV-1 vaccines currently being evaluated in clinical trials are designed to elicit
HIV-1-specific cellular immunity. Intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) assays allow sensitive,
quantitative ex vivo assessments of antigen-specific T cells including immunophenotyping of
responding cells and measurement of multiple effector functions. Additionally, the use of
banked cryopreserved PBMC samples makes this assay attractive in the setting of large
efficacy trials where it is less feasible to perform immunoassays on freshly isolated samples …