A gloved hand uses a dropper to add blue liquid to test tubes, with a DNA helix graphic in the background.

Translational Therapy Lab

The Translational Therapy Laboratory (TTL) provides translational research support services to Masonic Cancer Center members to facilitate the monitoring of clinical trials and the development of novel cellular and immune-based therapies. 

Two individuals in a laboratory setting, wearing white coats and blue gloves, work with a cryogenic storage unit filled with samples.

Expand all

Services

The Translational Therapy Shared Resource is a fee-for-service resource that provides correlative research sample processing and storage, and immune monitoring assays that include:

  • Biospecimen Processing and Biobanking
  • Comprehensive Inventory Management and shipping services provided by trained staff
  • Immunophenotyping by Flow Cytometry
    • Internally validated 10-13 marker panels to quantify basic immune subsets and markers of activation or proliferation
  • CyTOF
    • Maxpar Direct Immune Profiling Assay: A fully-validated commercial assay that can be performed on whole blood or fresh or thawed MNC.  The base panel consists of 30-markers that are used to identify 37 immune populations, with the ability add 6-8 additional markers of interest via a customizable expansion panel.  
    • 20-plex Barcode Assay - Broad Immune Panel:  An internally-validated 42-marker panel developed for large-scale projects.  This panel can be run on up to 20 individually-barcoded samples in a single tube and can be used to identify immune populations and measure cell activation and function.  
  • Functional Assays: 
    • Chromium-51 based cytotoxicity assays 
    • Flow cytometry-based functional assays to measure degranulation and cytokine production
    • Intracellular cytokine staining to detect antigen recognition
  • Senescence Core Services
    • qPCR in CD3+ cells to measure p16INK4a (Senescence) 
    • Sample coordination with MiBAM and Cytokine Reference Lab for SASP factors
  • Multiplex spatial histology
    • 60-plex IO-60 panel staining on human FFPE tissue sections using the Phenocycler 2.0 (Akoya Biosciences). The base panel identifies 60 different immune cell antigens, tumor specific markers and tissue architecture antigens. 

Clinical Trials Research Samples
Research sample processing and specialized testing services are available. We can also process, freeze and ship frozen samples to central repositories. We work closely with the Principal Investigator, Project Manager and Clinical Research Coordinator to prepare sample collection schedules, orders and request slips. The MSC-LIMS database allows us to track all immunotherapy patient samples and cellular therapy products from clinical research trials. Assay results are entered in MSC-LIMS.

Quality
The Translational Therapy Shared Resource operates as a good laboratory practice (GLP) facility. Well-trained personnel perform assays using standardized, validated protocols. We continually develop new methodologies to assess the in vivo immune effects and responses of novel clinical therapies as they are implemented and tested in patients.

Research Results
TTL works closely with CISS to provide Principal Investigators with research data results integrated with clinical data in dashboards for monitoring results in real-time or as datasets for statistical analysis of translational research trials.

Instrumentation

  • Standard BioTools Helios Mass Cytometer
  • Akoya PhenoCycler-Fusion 2.0