Advanced Immunoassays for Drug Hypersensitivity Research Course
The course was held at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Lung infection and immunology Unit board room at the University on the 10th and 11th of September 2019. Of the 13 participants registered, 12 were able to attend and the overall attendance on both days was good. The facilitators were all diligent in executing their assigned tasks and the feedback that was received from the participants indicated that they all learnt something that would be relevant and applicable to the day to day projects they are currently involved in. The lectures given were made available by facilitators via email to all the participants. Prof Chopra arrived by the 9th and extended her expertise to the Allergy and Immunology Laboratory group by carrying out checks on quality control for DNA isolations, ELISpot, Basophil activation and CAST ELISA assays that are run routinely at the lab. The course opened on the 10th with Prof Peter giving an overview of the purpose of the course and a talk on the Clinical Aspects of Adverse Drug Reactions. Prof Chopra spoke on HLA, KIR, ERAP typing methods and their quality control and Ms. Choshi closed day one with an in-depth look at Elispot of 1st line TB drugs as well as a demonstration at the laboratory. On the second day Dr Sinxadi started with a talk on Pharmacogenomics focusing on Genome Wide Association Studies in Adverse Drug reactions. She was followed by Prof Chopra speaking on Single cell methods for RNA, T-cell receptor sequencing and the Data analysis tools used. Ms Siwak then presented her section on Immunohistochemistry-TREG/ NVP with some slides showing how this is being applied locally to studies in the Allergy and Immunology group. Dr Rozot followed with Time of flight cytometry applications to ADRs and many participants had questions around this as several were using cytometry in their studies. Dr Wiesner spoke on Pharmacokinetic-Mass Spectrometry approaches to the detection of metabolites of ADRs and Prof Chopra and Prof Phillips closed off with Validation of HLA and SITE Seq. The participants initially on day one were not very forthcoming with questions or discussion points but by the end of day one and into day two there was more interactive discussion with the facilitators. The picture below shows some of the participants and facilitators at the close of the workshop.
