Platforms
Immune-monitoring platform, Institute of Virology
(Dr. Tanja Bauer)
(in collaboration with the Institute of Molecular Immunology and the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the Technische Universität München)
To evaluate the impact of immunotherapies it is necessary to have reliable monitoring tools available to assess immune responses of patients participating in clinical trials.
The central aim of the immune monitoring platform at the Institute of Virology is the development, establishment and standardization of different state-of-the-art methods for the analysis of immune responses against different infections.
The immune monitoring group is escorting several clinical trials with the aim to evaluate novel vaccines and therapeutic interventions for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and hepatitis C virus (HBV/HCV).
In addition to the assessment of immunologic effects in interventional studies, immune responses towards various viral infections (Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Cytomegalovirus (CMV), HBV, HCV and HIV) are monitored in different cohorts.
To assess and define immunological correlates of viral control and protection against infection, complex analysis of multiple parameters is required. Therefore we develop, standardize and perform technologies for multi-parametric functional and phenotypic analysis of T- (CD4+ and CD8+) and B-cell responses. Furthermore we focus on the development of systems to analyze, organize and store data for high throughput experimental procedures.
Available technologies:
- multi-colour intracellular cytokine staining (11-colour ICS)
- flow-cytometry based multi-colour proliferation assay
- database storage of multi-colour flow cytometry data
- Elispot assay for quantification of antigen-specific T and B cell responses
- MHC class I tetramer staining
- virus neutralization assay
- quantitative viral load assay
- expression profiling by quantitative RT-PCR
- genotypic and phenotypic analysis of virus escape
