T cell proliferation assay with macrophages - (Jul/15/2008 )

Hi,

Being clueless about immunology, I take a chance on asking what might be a stupid question;
I'd like to investigate the immunostimulatory properties of peritoneal macrophages, so I was wondering if they can be used in a proliferation assay.
What I'd like to do is to plate the macrophages, stimulate them by providing various danger signals, and then run a proliferation assay on isolated lymph node T-cells. Now, I guess having live macrophages as APCs is a problem, but separately measuring radioactivity in suspension and adherent to the wells might allow for compensation for that?
Is this a feasible strategy?

First of all
There ARE stupid questions but we can never be afraid of asking.

Secondly,
yours is NOT a stupid question.

Yes you can do it, although you can easily avoid using radiation... Stimulating immune cells, both cell lines and cells harvested from animal models, is common and you could find many papers on the subject and they will give you some great ideas for experimental protocol...

I work in the area of immunology and I work with cells... Feel free to contact me through email if you have more questions...

Good luck.