Quantification and characterization of specific T-cells by antigen-specific cytokine production using ELISPOT assay or intracellular cytokine staining

The novel generation of sensitive T-cell assays facilitates the direct quantitation and characterization of specific T-cell responses. Functional T-cell assays such as the ELISPOT assay and the intracellular cytokine cytometry (ICC) employ the antigen-specific induction of cytokines to detect specific T-cells on a single cell level. ICC has the advantage that the simultaneous phenotypic characterization of the antigen-specific T-cells is possible. There is evidence now from clinical cancer vaccination trials, that there is a relationship between the detection of vaccine-induced T-cells by cytokine-based assays and clinical responses. As these assays become increasingly relevant in clinical practice to suggest issues of assay validation and quality control become of major importance. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.