Although natural killer (NK) cells produce various cytokines that regulate other lymphocytes of the immune system, the primary effector function of NK cells is the direct cytolysis of their targets. Hence analyzing the cytotoxic potential of these lymphocytes is fundamental to understanding their biology and their clinical impact. We have previously shown that release-based cytotoxicity assays, such as calcein release assay, could potentially underestimate percent specific lysis if the entrapped reporter is not completely released and demonstrated that an Image cytometry method can overcome this caveat. In this chapter, we describe a detailed methodology to quantitate NK cell cytotoxicity using the Cellometer Vision Image Cytometry system.
Keywords: Calcein release assay; Cellometer Vision; Cytotoxicity; Image cytometry; NK cells.