Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
J Immunol. 2023 Jul 15;211(2):169-174. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.2300129.
The appropriate immunosurveillance tools are foundational for the creation of therapeutics, vaccines, and containment strategies when faced with outbreaks of novel pathogens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an urgent need to rapidly assess immune memory following infection or vaccination. Although there have been attempts to standardize cellular assays more broadly, methods for measuring cell-mediated immunity remain variable across studies. Commonly used methods include ELISPOT, intracellular cytokine staining, activation-induced markers, cytokine secretion assays, and peptide-MHC tetramer staining. Although each assay offers unique and complementary information on the T cell response, there are challenges associated with standardizing these assays. The choice of assay can be driven by sample size, the need for high throughput, and the information sought. A combination of approaches may be optimal. This review describes the benefits and limitations of commonly used methods for assessing T cell immunity across SARS-CoV-2 studies.
当面临新型病原体爆发时，适当的免疫监测工具是开发治疗方法、疫苗和控制策略的基础。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，人们迫切需要快速评估感染或接种疫苗后的免疫记忆。尽管已经有尝试更广泛地标准化细胞检测方法，但用于测量细胞介导免疫的方法在不同研究中仍然存在差异。常用的方法包括 ELISPOT、细胞内细胞因子染色、激活诱导标志物、细胞因子分泌检测和肽-MHC 四聚体染色。尽管每种检测方法都提供了关于 T 细胞反应的独特和互补信息，但标准化这些检测方法存在挑战。检测方法的选择可以由样本量、高通量的需求和所需信息驱动。多种方法的组合可能是最佳选择。本文综述了 SARS-CoV-2 研究中评估 T 细胞免疫的常用方法的优缺点。
