Immunology services for the development
of novel medicines

Cytokines are important mediators of immune cell functionality and may strongly influence the outcome of an immune response. Accordingly, it is important to know whether a compound alters the production and secretion of cytokines partaking in an immune response.

FOCUS Immunology has established ex vivo assays in order to detect effects of compounds on cytokine secretion. To this effect, whole blood cultures or purified blood cells are suboptimally stimulated in order to activate both lympoid and myeloid cells in the presence or absence of the test-compound.
Suboptimal stimulation is used in order to test the compounds in the linear range of the dose-response-curve of the stimulant and which allows the detection of compound-mediated effects.

At termination of the culture, the following cytokines are determined from the supernatant by ELISA: IL-6 and TNF-alpha as prototype pro-inflammatory cytokines, IL-8 as mediator of chemotaxis, IL-2 as a central regulator of immune cell functions, IFN-gamma for its involvement in anti-viral immune responses and IL-10 as the major immunosuppressive cytokine.

FOCUS Immunology’s cytokine package was designed to keep the assay concise and to answer many questions with a reasonable use of resources.

It is of course possible to add or leave out any cytokine for your specific project.

We have experience in analyzing a great many more than the above listed cytokines and are also willing to establish any assay for which reagents are available or if the need is dire enough to develop our own reagents.