Identifying Predictive Cytokine Biomarkers in Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Using the Invitrogen ProQuantum High-Sensitivity Immunoassay Platform

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide and are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. These heterogenous and complex inflammatory diseases have few good biomarkers for disease etiology, diagnosis, and monitoring of treatment efficacy. Characterization has previously been performed at genomic and proteomic levels, as well as airway histology, lung function, and quality of life metrics. Since inflammation typically involves one or more cytokine cascades, or pathways responsible for triggering and maintaining such inflammation, cytokine profiles are critical to advancing our understanding of the disease. However, a powerful immunoassay platform with a simplified workflow that is capable of early cytokine detection and minimum sample consumption is lacking in the asthma/COPD research space. The goal of the following study was to determine whether the Invitrogen ProQuantum high-sensitivity immunoassay platform (www.thermofisher.com/proquantum) could prove useful in uncovering biomarker profiles in asthmatic populations. Additional benefits included running the proteomic assay on ubiquitous qPCR instrumentation and the small 2 μL sample requirement. In this study, 168 human serum samples were analyzed (IL-5, IL-6, IL-8, IL-13, IFN-γ and eotaxin-1) across wheezing and asthmatic phenotypes, as well as healthy age-matched controls among both cohorts. Data presented include group-wise analyses that indicate that the ProQuantum high-sensitivity immunoassay has helped uncover predictive biomarkers in samples from wheezing and asthmatic children, that were not previously distinguishable using more traditional immunoassay testing platforms.