Abstract
Immunomodulatory drugs - agents regulating the immune response - are commonly used for treating immune system disorders and minimizing graft versus host disease in persons receiving organ transplants. At the cellular level, immunosuppressant drugs are used to inhibit pro-inflammatory or tissue-damaging responses of cells. However, few studies have so far precisely characterized the cellular-level effect of immunomodulatory treatment. The primary challenge arises due to the rapid and transient nature of T-cell immune responses to such treatment. T-cell responses involve a highly interactive network of different types of cytokines, which makes precise monitoring of drug-modulated T-cell response difficult. Here, we present a nanoplasmonic biosensing approach to quantitatively characterize cytokine secretion behaviors of T cells with a fine time-resolution (every 10 min) that are altered by an immunosuppressive drug used in the treatment of T-cell-mediated diseases. With a microfluidic platform integrating antibody-conjugated gold nanorod (AuNR) arrays, the technique enables simultaneous multi-time-point measurements of pro-inflammatory (IL-2, IFN-γ, and TNF-α) and anti-inflammatory (IL-10) cytokines secreted by T cells. The integrated nanoplasmonic biosensors achieve precise measurements with low operating sample volume (1 μL), short assay time (∼30 min), heightened sensitivity (∼20-30 pg/mL), and negligible sensor crosstalk. Data obtained from the multicytokine secretion profiles with high practicality resulting from all of these sensing capabilities provide a comprehensive picture of the time-varying cellular functional state during pharmacologic immunosuppression. The capability to monitor cellular functional response demonstrated in this study has great potential to ultimately permit personalized immunomodulatory treatment.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 941-948 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | ACS Sensors |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 22 2016 |
Funding
This work was supported by the National Institute of Health (R01 HL119542), the National Science Foundation (CBET 1263889), and the Coulter Foundation. R.N. thanks for the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research for support under the Postdoctoral Translational Scholars Program by grant number 2UL1TR000433 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NCATS or the National Institutes of Health.
Keywords
- T cells
- cytokines
- immunomodulatory therapy
- localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR)
- multiplexed immunoassay
- nanoplasmonic biosensing
- tacrolimus
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Bioengineering
- Instrumentation
- Process Chemistry and Technology
- Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes