Scientists at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), have developed a dendritic cell culture system as a read-out of the immune response and as a replacement for animal testing. 

Immune responses are an important part of the fight against numerous diseases. Vaccine companies are interested in knowing if their development products are likely to yield the desired positive immune response, whilst companies with an interest in autoimmune or allergic diseases are developing products which should reduce the immune response in certain circumstances. Biologics companies must also understand how the patient’s immune response might react to their, potentially antigenic, therapeutics. 

This in vitro model is able to generate data that could be invaluable in the very early stages of drug or vaccine development, thus saving companies large sums in developing products which will fail in clinical development. In addition, money and time is saved on animal testing. The model is an in vitro culture system of human dendritic cells (the decision makers in immunological processes) which can be used to investigate the influence of ‘foreign’ molecules on dendritic cell function. Within these co-cultures we are able to detect various effector T cell immune responses (T1, Th2 and Th17) or alternatively, regulatory immune responses (Treg) that have 
been similarly observed in vivo, underlining the predictive capacity of these assays and its potential to serve as an alternative for animal testing. 

We are offering this service to academics / industrial researchers who may have an interest in accessing this assay system and associated expertise within LUMC.