Immune Analysis Shared Resource

Roswell Park Cancer Institute Corp, Buffalo NY

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The mission of the Immune Analysis Shared Resource (IASR) is to provide comprehensive and serial monitoring of tumor-specific immune functions in patients with cancer, including patients who are treated with immunotherapies at Roswell Park or other institutions. The IASR provides a broad range of state-of-the-art immunologic assays performed under a rigorous quality control program. The IASR also offers consultation regarding optimal immunologic assessment, assay development, and assistance in processing and storage of patient samples. The IASR assesses spontaneous and therapy-induced tumor antigen-specific antibody and T cell responses using advanced technologies, such as ELISA, ELISPOT, and CyTOF. Moreover, if needed, the IASR helps investigators establish tumor antigen-specific T cell lines from patients’ blood and/or tumor samples, which can be utilized for additional downstream analyses. The IASR currently serves members from all CCSG programs, provides blood-to-data services, with an expert technical staff performing all aspects of consultation, sample processing and preparation, QC, assay design, assay, analysis and data interpretation. All assays are validated in the IASR and implemented in accordance with established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). In the reporting period (2013-2017), the IASR served a total of 45 Roswell users, of which 39 (87%) were CCSG members. The IASR plays a critical role in the translational research on clinical trials within the Roswell Park and across multiple cancer centers such as Roswell Park-UPCI Ovarian Cancer SPORE (5P50CA15998-04). Since 2012, the IASR has been involved in 33 clinical trials for processing samples and analyzing the immune responses in blood and tumor tissues. The specific Aims of the IASR are: 1) To provide Roswell Park CCSG members access to state-of-the-art monitoring of immune responses of cancer patients undergoing immunotherapy clinical trials; 2) To provide expertise required for the development of new immune monitoring assays; 3) To provide expert support for study design and data preparation for Peer-review grant submission and clinical trial development. The IASR maintains a wide range of state-of-theart instruments that are typically outside the reach of individual investigators in a single laboratory setting. IASR has established SOPs for method development and validation. IASR continues to optimize the use of recently acquired instrumentation such as Seahorse, Fluidigm Helios CyTOF and Hyperion Imaging Mass Cytometer. The goal of the IASR is to assist bench to bedside research in order to understand the impact of immunotherapeutic approaches on cancer patients. ISAR plans to enhance technical capabilities of “deep phenotyping” of immunosuppressive or functional immune cells in peripheral and tumor microenvironment by completing the optimization and validation of assays, also enhance the immune assay flow rate/ throughput speed and feasibility by introducing automated systems for sample processing and micro-assay plates preparation.