Pharmacologic Modulation of Human Immunity in the Era of Immuno-oncology: Something Old, Something New

A kinetic ELISA to determine the immunoreactive fraction of monoclonal antibodies

We developed a two-step ELISA to determine the immunoreactive fraction of monoclonal antibodies in conditions of antigen excess. An antibody aliquot at limiting dilution was incubated in wells coated with increasing amounts of antigen up to concentrations that bind 100% of antibody. At equilibrium, a supernatant aliquot was transferred to a second plate coated with excess of antiglobulin, and the captured antibody was incubated with peroxidase-conjugated anti-IgG. Antibody was quantitated from the enzyme velocity gradient in a kinetic ELISA, and the immunoreactive fraction calculated as (1 - gradient_i/gradient_T) x 100, where _i and _T are the gradients for the free and total antibody fractions. For four distinct monoclonal antibodies (anti-diphtheria toxoid, -cholera toxin, -bovine serum albumin (BSA), and -trinitrophenyl-BSA), measurement of inter-assay variability yielded values ranging from 3.1 to 7.4 (% coefficient of variation), which supports method repeatability. This ELISA is simple, precise, and applicable to mono- and polyclonal antibodies.

ImmtorLig_DB: repertoire of virtually screened small molecules against immune receptors to bolster host immunity

Host directed therapies to boost immunity against infection are gaining considerable impetus following the observation that use of antibiotics has become a continuous source for the emergence of drug resistant strains of pathogens. Receptors expressed by the cells of immune system play a cardinal role in initiating sequence of events necessary to ameliorate many morbid conditions. Although, ligands for the immune receptors are available; but their use is limited due to complex structure, synthesis and cost-effectiveness. Virtual screening (VS) is an integral part of chemoinformatics and computer-aided drug design (CADD) and aims to streamline the process of drug discovery. ImmtorLig_DB is a repertoire of 5000 novel small molecules, screened from ZINC database and ranked using structure based virtual screening (SBVS) against 25 immune receptors which play a pivotal role in defending and initiating the activation of immune system. Consequently, in the current study, small molecules were screened by docking on the essential domains present on the receptors expressed by cells of immune system. The screened molecules exhibited efficacious binding to immune receptors, and indicated a possibility of discovering novel small molecules. Other features of ImmtorLig_DB include information about availability, clustering analysis, and estimation of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties of the screened small molecules. Structural comparisons indicate that predicted small molecules may be considered novel. Further, this repertoire is available via a searchable graphical user interface (GUI) through http://bioinfo.imtech.res.in/bvs/immtor/ .