First, in an interesting Shistotosomiasis study, Gaze, et al, employ protein microarrays in a longitudinal immunomics study for vaccine antigen discovery (1). Schistosomiasis is a pervasive disease affecting 200 million people a year and traditional drug treatments are ineffective due to re-infection, drug expense, and parasite drug resistance. Non-sterile immunity does develop over long periods of exposure. However, protection of high risk groups such as children will benefit from vaccination. Vaccine development has encountered difficulties due to the parasite’s outer covering to which the host commonly produces an immune response. Using microarrays to screen for IgG and IgE responses from the sera of resistant individuals, the group was able to develop a method for identification of complete sets of humoral immune responses to epitope phenotypes of this parasite. The microarrays were constructed using ONCYTE porous nitrocellulose arrayed with recombinantly expressed surface antigen proteins. Sera was screened on the arrays and immune response detected using traditional fluorescent methods. Protein microarrays uniquely enable this type of research through the practical capability of high throughput, high density multiplexing, or “mega-plexing”. Further benefits of this method could be achieved integrating multi-color multiplexing of the ArrayCAM systems. Using multi-dimensional cluster analysis, specific signatures of infection intensities were identified as well as potential deleterious effects of IgE responders. Full article text can be found here:
A second interesting publication pursues a similar approach in immunomics screening, but in this case observing a viral model. Here, Gudrun, et al, investigate bats as potential mammalian reservoirs for human viral pathogens, notably influenza A. Although viral infections can be effectively identified using quantitative RT-PCR tehcniques, immunological methods pose a critical advantage. Where genomic methods can detect the presence of a virus, the short window before viral clearance presents a limiting factor of this testing method. Immunological methods can identify past infections for long periods of time after the virus has been cleared. Utilizing a similar method with recombinant proteins of 31 influenza A globular domains arrayed on ONCYTE nitrocellulose, the group screened sera from straw-colored fruit bats for IgG binding. Results of this study showed 33 out of 100 bats with titers against one or more influenza A antigens. This is significantly high enough serological evidence indicating bats are a likely asymptomatic mammalian reservoir for pathogenic viruses. Full article text can be found here:
