Recent Advances in Immune Monitoring

The human immune system plays a pivotal role in conferring protective immunity to pathogenic microorganisms and cancer while its hyper-activation can result in serious inflammatory conditions such as autoimmunity. Immune monitoring is critical to determine the efficacy of therapeutic approaches such as the administration of a vaccine or to ascertain the safety of an administered agent such as a biologic that targets the immune system. Immune monitoring can involve the measurement of soluble immune mediators including cytokines and chemokines, as well as the analysis of phenotypic and functional status of immune cells. There is a plethora of platforms that offer highly sensitive and specific assays to monitor the immune system. These include simple immunoassays to complex multiplex assays that measure soluble biomarkers in various biological fluids and cell-based assays using a variety of platforms such as flow cytometry and enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay.

In order to generate reliable immune monitoring data that will help us determine the safety and efficacy of the therapeutic intervention approach from a global study, highly standardized methods to collect, process and prepare patient samples need to be implemented. This webinar will focus on the recent advances in immune monitoring.

Speaker

Sinnathamby Gomathinayagam, PhD, Senior Scientist, Translational Biomarkers Solutions, Covance

Dr. Gomathinayagam received his PhD in Immunology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He carried out his post-doctoral research at the Kimmel Cancer Institute of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. He has over 15 years of experience studying various aspects of immunity to infectious agents and cancer. During his scientific career, he has been involved in vaccine studies in livestock and humans and has led discovery efforts to identify biomarkers associated with various cancer indications and infectious diseases. Dr. Gomathinayagam joined Covance in 2010 as a Senior Scientist and therapeutic leader for immunology and inflammation. He also manages the cell culture and flow cytometry laboratory at Covance Translational Biomarkers Solutions, where his team has developed and implemented a number of assays to support the development of Pharmaceutical drugs and biologics/biosimilars.

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