Development and validation of home-made Luminex assays for the quantification of multiple cytokines in human samples

Cytokine profiling is a powerful tool to link the host immune system with disease pathogenesis and/or treatment efficacy.

The analysis of cytokine expression is frequently required for the characterisation of the status of the immune system, to demonstrate the functionality of the cells of interest and as an analysis of surrogate markers for in vitro potency testing.

The aim of this study was to design a Luminex immunoassay using home-made coupled magnetic beads with specific monoclonal antibody for the quantification of human TNFα, IL-2 and Perforin, on the Luminex MAGPIX analyser. The performance of this 3-plex assay was evaluated in terms of accuracy, precision, quantification range and sensitivity.