Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Immunology and Infection

Determining the Phagocytic Activity of Clinical Antibody Samples

Elizabeth G. McAndrew¹, Anne-Sophie Dugast¹, Anna F. Licht¹, Justin R. Eusebio¹, Galit Alter¹, Margaret E. Ackerman²

¹Massachusetts General Hospital, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, ²Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College

We present a high-throughput flow cytometric assay to determine the phagocytic activity of antigen-specific antibodies from clinical samples, utilizing fluorescent antigen-coated beads and a monocytic cell line expressing multiple Fc receptors—providing receptor usage and phagocytic activity determinations in a standardized and reproducible fashion for any antigen of interest.

Immunology and Infection

New Tools to Expand Regulatory T Cells from HIV-1-infected Individuals

Mathieu Angin¹, Melanie King¹, Marylyn Martina Addo^1,2

¹Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, ²Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital

CD4+ Regulatory T cells are potent immune-modulators and serve important functions in immune homeostasis. The paucity of these cells in peripheral blood makes functional studies challenging, specifically in the context of HIV-1-infection. We here describe a method to isolate and expand functional CD4+ Tregs from peripheral blood from HIV-1-infected individuals.