“
“Blizard Institute, Barts and The London School

selleck chemical of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK Fluorochrome-conjugated peptide–major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) multimers are widely used for flow cytometric visualization of antigen-specific T cells. The most common multimers, streptavidin–biotin-based ‘tetramers’, can be manufactured readily in the laboratory. Unfortunately, there are large differences between the threshold of T cell receptor (TCR) affinity required to capture pMHC tetramers from solution and that which is required for T cell activation. This disparity means that tetramers sometimes fail to stain antigen-specific T cells within a sample, an issue that is particularly problematic when

staining tumour-specific, autoimmune or MHC class II-restricted T cells, which often display TCRs of low affinity for pMHC. Here, we compared optimized staining with tetramers and dextramers (dextran-based multimers), with the latter carrying greater numbers of both pMHC and fluorochrome per molecule. Most notably, we find that: (i) dextramers stain more brightly than tetramers; (ii) dextramers outperform tetramers when TCR–pMHC affinity is low; Fulvestrant cost (iii) dextramers outperform tetramers with pMHC class II reagents where there is an absence of co-receptor stabilization; and (iv) dextramer sensitivity is enhanced further by specific protein kinase inhibition. Dextramers are compatible with current state-of-the-art flow cytometry platforms and will probably find particular utility in the fields of autoimmunity and cancer immunology. “
“The 5th Congress of the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia Oceania (FIMSA) was organized jointly with the 39th annual conference of the Indian Immunology Society (IIS) in New Delhi from March 14–17, 2012. Founded in 1992 as a non-profit scientific organization, the Federation currently has twelve immunology societies as its full members (Australia,

New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Hong Thymidylate synthase Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Sri Lanka, Iran, and India) and a few others as associate members. It is one of the four major Federations of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS), the other three being the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS), the Latin American Association of Immunology (ALAI: Asociación Latinoamericana de Inmunología), and the Federation of African Immunological Societies (FAIS). These Federations have played a key role in promoting collaboration and communication between immunologists through educational programs with the objective of advancing this science in Asia. The central theme of the FIMSA 2012 meeting was “Translational Immuno-logy in health and disease” with the focus of the main talks being applied research, broadly modeled on the bench-to-clinic theme.