Tuberculosis vaccine development update: Standardised operating procedure for the use of the Mycobacterial growth inhibition assays

Published 26 February 2019
Technology platform Vaccines

Last month in J Immunol Methods, Tanner et al established a standardised operating procedure (SOP) for the use of the Mycobacterial growth inhibition assays in TB vaccine development. The work was performed under the FP7 funded project EURIPRED (European Research Infrastructures for Poverty Related Diseases) and involved among the participating institutions, EATRIS partner Istituto Superiore di Sanita (ISS).

In a ring testing exercise, they demonstrated comparable results across two shared PBMC sample sets at three sites. This is a critical step in assay development to ensure that comparable information can be extracted from TB vaccine studies conducted across different organisations.

Lucia Gabriele, EATRIS vaccines platform chair, ISS,  commented “the work done with this group to assess repeatability and reproducibility of MGIA is key to generate solid results when selecting novel TB vaccine candidates”.

EATRIS is supporting the project as part of the wider EATRIS Quality Initiative addressing reproducibility, standards, and reference materials fundamental to translational research. You can read the article here.