An investigator asked me to forward a question to this group:
He has a patient with high levels of IL-4 in their serum. He would like to be
able to measure whether this IL-4 protein can bind the IL-4 receptor using flow
cytometry and a competitive binding technique. He would like to know if there
are any companies producing IL-4 conjugated to fluorochromes (the cytokine NOT
the antibody to IL-4). He figures he could measure the binding of the
fluorochrome-conjugated cytokine, then stain with both the fluorochrome-
conjugated cytokine as well as the patient's serum, then see how much the
fluorescence staining was inhibited. Another issue is what type of cells should
he use for this type of experiment.
I'd appreciate any suggestions anyone has. We have only looked at surface
staining in combination with intracellular cytokine staining using antibodies to
various cytokines. We have never looked at cytokine-receptor binding by flow.
Thanks in advance,
MaryAnn DeMaria
Harvard Medical School-NERPRC