Functionally Characterized Human PBMCs: An Improved In Vitro Model of Human Immune Response

Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) contain many of the functional cell types of immune system, and are an ideal model to study the human immune response in vitro. Currently, PBMCs are being used in basic and clinical research areas including basic immunology and cell biology, infectious diseases, vaccine development, tumor immunology, and drug discovery. PBMC are also widely used for monitoring disease progression, designing personalized approaches to treatment, and predicting the occurrence of treatment-associated adverse events. The majority of PBMC applications rely on highly complex cell-based assays; however, phenotypic and functional variability of human PBMCs makes the development and validation of these assays difficult. Additionally, variations in cell collection and cryopreservation protocols can further affect PBMC properties. In this presentation, we demonstrate that pre-screening characterization of lot-specific functional activity of PBMCs is extremely useful for selecting cells to address individual experimental goals.

Key Points

• PBMCs play a critical role in modern biomedical research; however, the functional activity of these cells is highly variable
• Many factors affecting PBMC variability, including genetic diversity and environmental pressure, are outside of researchers’ control
• Conducting pre-screening and establishing PBMC functional activity profiles offers an attractive solution to address PBMC variability