QuantiFERONTechnology is a unique approach to disease detection and monitoring. As the only in-vitro diagnostic technology available to provide information on the activity of the cell-mediated functions of the immune system from whole blood samples, QuantiFERONopens doors to new understanding of important diseases and to new approaches in disease detection, management and control.

Individuals exposed to diseases have specific T cell lymphocytes in their blood that maintain an immunological memory for the immunologically reactive molecules (antigens) of  the priming disease, be that an infectious disease or a cancer cell.   The addition of a disease antigen  to blood collected from a primed individual results in the rapid re-stimulation of antigen-specific effector T cells, resulting in the release of the cytokine Interferon-gamma (IFN-).  Effector T cells are able to respond quickly when exposed to the priming antigen. Thus the production of IFN- in response to antigen exposure is a specific marker for cellular immune response against that disease antigen (recall response).

This is illustrated in the following diagram:

 
  
 
The stimulation of effector T cells in whole blood with a specific antigen(s) or mitogen, and the subsequent simple quantification of the resulting IFN- in the plasma, is the basis of the QuantiFERON technology.