Single-cell multi-protein device for informative cellular function evaluation

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant ELISpot including its variant FLUOROSpot remains the mainstay to measure true secretion of single cells and to assess cellular function e g immunity in the pre clinical and clinical settings However because it measures only one or two proteins per single cell and provides minimal biological information it has limited utility for measuring cell biology and physiological functions at the systems level Because a subset of the cells capable of producing multiple cytokines up to called polyfunctional cells dominate the overall response but currently no commercial tools are available to quantify polyfunctional cells at the highly multiplexed level representing a major barrier in both academic research and pharmaceutical industry to accurately quantify cellular immune responses Thus it is necessary to develop a technology that can measure an array of proteins from single cells and will help address a host of important biological and biomedical questions ranging from immune cell function heterogeneity stem cell differentiation drug resistance angiogenesis to cell cell communication networks Also this technology is of urgent need in biotech and pharmaceutical industry To address these challenges this technology needs to meet all three of the following requirements i Single cell sensitivity ii High multiplicity and iii High content IsoPlexi has a prototype hand held technology that for the first time provides the ability to measure many up to secreted effector proteins at the single T cell level At the same time this device in its envisioned form will be far less costly than existing single cell instruments representing a significant market advantage for wide spread use in pre clinical and clinical uses When applied to but not limited in the immunotherapeutics space our technology has the capability to detect the broadest mechanism of action at the single immune cell level and quantify the effector function of activated T cell response including polyfunctionality at a broad cellular leve to detect both effective response and potential toxicity autoimmunity With Phase support IsoPlexis plans to conduct the initial industrial Randamp D to turn this academic technology to a commercial product We propose to develop a fully packaged single cell protein secretion assay device to meet minimum commercial usability and validity standards develop computational pipelines and a software suite for automated data quantification and informatics We expect to develop a user friendly hardware and a software suite for reliable single cell multiplex protein secretion profiling and rapid data analysis This technology can not only provide comprehensive single cell information to address the biological and biomedical questions in academic research but also offers a solution for biotech and pharmaceutical industry to evaluate drug treatment responses at the single cell level PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE We propose to conduct the initial industrial Randamp D to turn our current academic single cell multiplex secretion profiling technology to a commercial product By developing a user friendly hardware and a software suite we expect to perform reliable single cell secretion protein assay and rapid data analysis which is suitable for pre clinical and clinial application This technology can not only provide comprehensive single cell information to address the biological and biomedical questions in academic research but also offers a solution for biotech and pharmaceutical industry to evaluate drug treatment responses at the single cell level