University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI)

Overview

The Immunologic Monitoring Laboratory (IML) is a shared facility responsible for serial monitoring of immunologic functions in patients with cancer, those who are treated with biologic therapies, and those who participate in clinical trials or research protocols at the UPCI. The IML makes available to its users a broad range of state-of-the-art immunologic assays, performed under a rigorous quality control program. In addition, as advances in immunobiology occur and new assays are requested by the users, the IML performs pre-clinical evaluations of the assays and, when they become reliable and standardized, adds them to the available assay list. Advice to users about test selection and result interpretation is also an important part of the IML's responsibilities. The main categories of assays include phenotypic markers by flow cytometry (35% of total usage); assays measuring effects of anti-cancer vaccines, including antigen-specific T-cell frequency analysis by ELISPOT, tetramer analysis, or cytokine flow cytometry (25%); cytokine determinations (20%); cell-mediated cytotoxicity (10%); and apoptosis assays (5%).

The laboratory facility was established in 1986 and has been operated since then by Dr. Theresa L. Whiteside, Professor of Pathology, Immunology, and Otolaryngology, for the benefit of the members of the UPCI. The IML maintains extensive quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) programs to ensure the validity of test results. The IML has established a fee-for-service schedule which gives priority to UPCI members. The high quality and reproducibility of the assays contributes to the overall excellence of UPCI clinical and research studies.