Cellular Cytotoxicity Laboratory

The Cellular Cytotoxicity Laboratory has developed, optimized, and pre-validated, and validated assays that can quantify the cytotoxic cellular subsets in regard to their ability to eliminate the HIV-1 infected cells.  In this context, the Interferon Gamma (IFN-γ) Enzyme Linked ImmunoSpot (ELISpot) has been proven to be an excellent surrogate of the cytotoxic assay to quantify the total T cell response and perform epitope mapping. Moreover, we have implemented the detection of granzyme B (GzB) delivered by the effector cells into the target cells of interest to detect the cytotoxic activity of NK and HIV-1-specific CD8+ T cells. We have also optimized a novel approach to quantify the elimination of HIV-1-infected cells by cytotoxic CD8+ T cells, NK cells, and Antibody Dependent Cellular Cytotoxicity (ADCC)-mediating antibodies  using reduction in the luciferase activity as final readout.

We have implemented these assays in a variety of studies to detect Cytotoxic T and NK cell responses, as well as ADCC induced by natural HIV-1 infection or by vaccine candidates.