Vacuette cat serum separator clot activator tubes

All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University local ethics committee. Informed consent was obtained from 11 healthy donors (7 women and 4 men, age 24–60 years [median 27 years, Q1 = 25 – Q3 = 32]). Each donor received two doses of the inactivated TBE vaccine (Tick-E-Vac^®, 0.5 ml, FSBSI “Chumakov FSC R&D IBP RAS”, Russia) with the interval of 30 days according to the approved immunization protocol (16 (link)); immunizations were performed in 2016–2018. Ten donors had no record of previous TBE vaccinations or infections, and one (donor #9) had a TBE vaccination course 10 years prior to the study. Blood samples (9–72 ml) were collected at each time point (Figure 1) in a certified diagnostics laboratory and placed into VACUETTE^® K3E K3EDTA tubes (Greiner Bio-One, Austria). Additional portions of peripheral blood (from 2.5 to 10 ml) were collected into the VACUETTE^® CAT serum separator clot activator tubes (Greiner Bio-One, Austria) for serum isolation according to a standard protocol. HLA alleles for all donors were determined using an in-house cDNA high-throughput sequencing method.

Blood samples were withdrawn into Vacuette CAT serum separator clot activator tubes (Greiner Bio-One, Austria), centrifuged, and the separated serum was aliquoted and stored at −80°C until analysis.