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.