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closeNot a novel method
Posted by mhbachmann on 11 Jul 2012 at 22:10 GMT
The experimental results in this paper appear solid and the finding that cells killed by CTLs do not release significant amounts of luciferase into the supernatant is very valuable for those using this kind of immunological assay. However, the authors' assertion that this is a "new" method invented in the authors' lab is clearly wrong. At least two groups reported on using luciferase for cytotoxicity assays way before this group did:
1. Brown et al. Biophotonic cytotoxicity assay for high-throughput screening of cytolytic killing. J Immunol Methods (2005) vol. 297 (1-2) pp. 39-52
Brown et al. compared the bioluminescence based cytotoxicity assay (LCA) side by side to the chromium release assay using a U251T glioma cell line and genetically engineered, glioma-specific primary CD8+ CTL clones. They did a thorough analysis and found the LCA to be equally valid.
2. Thorne et al. Synergistic antitumor effects of immune cell-viral biotherapy. Science (2006) vol. 311 (5768) pp. 1780-4
Bioluminescence was used to measure the activity of cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells against a luciferase-labelled human ovarian cancer cell line.
Readers have to decide whether this is a mere oversight or else.