Exciting preprint by Varnaité et al. in which the authors have used Mabtech IRIS and FluoroSpot Flex: IgG/IgA/IgM to study antibody-secreting plasma cells (ASCs) specific for the nucleocapsid (N) protein. One very interesting finding was that N-specific ASCs could be detected in all 20 patients using the FluoroSpot assay, but in only 16 of the patients using other methods such as ELISA. As ASCs probably can be detected earlier than IgG titers, the present data lift the benefit of using B cell FluoroSpot for sensitive detection of ASCs.
Mabtech products used