Infectious Diseases

CellCarta has a variety of complex immune-monitoring capabilities, including flow cytometry, mass cytometry, ELISpot, as well as immunoassay platforms to assess cell-mediated immunity for the development of therapies for infectious diseases.

Working with large pharma and biotech partners, CellCarta supports clinical phases of vaccine development by routinely developing assays to monitor key clinical endpoints.

Given our strong expertise in cell-mediated immunity, we work in close collaboration with biotech partners on several vaccines, going beyond the traditional neutralizing antibodies assay to develop and validate intracellular cytokine staining assay by flow cytometry as well as ELISpot assays.

We are also well-versed in the development of immunogenicity assays and can provide multiplexed cytokine profiles with our Meso Scale Discovery® (MSD) platform.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting race toward the development of new vaccines and therapies, we partnered with biopharma companies to rapidly develop and validate assays for clinical trials.

To help understand cellular immunity and its role in providing protection and promoting recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infections, our teams customized specific COVID-19 assays.

These include ELISpot and FluoroSpot assays to measure low-frequency antigen responses and ICS assays to monitor cytokine production at the single-cell level.

All assays can be validated for secondary and primary endpoints in a turn-around time aligned with clinical needs.

Using our state-of-the-art mass spectrometry  and flow cytometry platforms, we support the development of biomarkers and perform quantitative measurements for clinical trials on infectious diseases such as

• AIDS/HIV
• hepatitis C (HCV)
• hepatitis B (HBV)
• influenza
• and COVID-19.

These assays led to several publications, but also numerous patents specifically on Brucellosis, Q fever, and Lyme disease biomarkers.

CellCarta has a long tradition of supporting research on infectious diseases as evidenced by its partnerships with the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for which CellCarta acted as one of the NIAID Clinical Proteomics Centers for Infectious Disease & Biodefense.

As such, CellCarta worked extensively on identifying biomarkers to monitor therapeutic and vaccine responses and susceptibility to infection, working on indications such as tuberculosis, dengue fever, malaria, flu, and brucellosis.

Here are some examples of work we did in the field of infectious diseases:

1. A Randomized Dose-Escalating Phase I Trial of a Replication-Deficient Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus Vector-Based Vaccine Against Human Cytomegalovirus
2. Immunogenicity and Safety of a Quadrivalent Plant-derived Virus Like Particle Influenza Vaccine Candidate – Two Randomized Phase II Clinical Trials in 18 to 49 and ≥50 Years Old Adults
3. Humoral and Cell-Mediated Immune Responses to H5N1 Plant-Made Virus-Like Particle Vaccine Are Differentially Impacted by Alum and GLA-SE Adjuvants in a Phase 2 Clinical Trial