Microtools for Profiling Immune Responses

Samples from human patients used for clinical research are often limited in size and availability, and cells of particular interest are usually rare and have short viabilities. Therefore, a critical challenge for advancing clinical immunology is the development of new technologies that make it possible to collect quantitative data for a large number of individual primary cells (104-106) in one experiment that is equivalent to a series of independent assays (flow cytometry, ELISPOT, and genotyping). Such technologies would enable the construction of highly correlated datasets that detail the state of the cellular immune system; such profiles would (1) facilitate the development of new antimicrobial immunotherapies and (2) improve immunological monitoring for diagnosing a disease and analyzing the efficacy of immunotherapies over time.