Achieving intracellular cytokine staining assay concordance on two continents to assess HIV vaccine-induced T-cell responses.

The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) conducts clinical trials on 4 continents in pursuit of a safe and effective HIV vaccine. Cellular immune responses to vaccination that define vaccine immunogenicity and/or immune correlates of protection can be measured using multiparameter intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) assays. The HVTN cellular immunology laboratory, located in Seattle, WA, conducts ICS assays for vaccine trials according to Good Clinical Laboratory Practices (GCLP). In 2013, the HVTN established a second GCLP compliant cellular immunology laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa to assess vaccine immunogenicity for HVTN trials conducted on the African continent. To ensure ICS readouts in the 2 laboratories were directly comparable, we conducted concordance testing using PBMC from healthy controls and vaccine trial participants. Despite standardized procedures and instrumentation, shared quality control measures and quality assurance oversight, several factors impacted our ability to obtain close agreement in T-cell responses measured in the 2 laboratories. One of these was the type of fetal bovine serum (FBS) used in the assay, which impacted lymphocyte cell viability and background responses. In addition, the differences in supernatant removal technique also significantly affected our ability to detect positive responses to vaccine antigens. Standardization of these factors allowed us to achieve and maintain ICS assay concordance across the 2 laboratories over multiple years, accelerating our efforts to evaluate HIV vaccines. The insights gained in this process are valuable for assay transfer efforts by groups of investigators that need to directly compare data generated in different laboratories around the globe.

Emergency online teaching during COVID-19: A case study of Australian tertiary students in teacher education and creative arts.

Emergency online teaching (EOT) due to COVID19 is different to well-planned online learning. This small-scale qualitative case study explored the impact of EOT upon undergraduate students in a regional university and a metropolitan university in Australia. Each university had some experience in online or distance learning, however, courses in this study were on-campus face-to-face courses in education and performing arts. Differentiating factors considered are location, course of study, year of study and innovations that arose during the EOT period. To assist in the interpretation of findings, this case study utilises the "emergency remote teaching environments'' (ERTE) developed by Whittle, Tiwari, Yan and Williams (2020) as an interpretive lens; and the findings of this study are also compared with the findings in the Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TESQA) November 2020 report. Implications derived from the present case study for consideration in the development of future online learning include technology selected, upskilling tertiary educators and unexpected benefits to students.