High-throughput serological assay for detection of cytokines/chemokines in COVID-19 patients

新冠肺炎是一种新的病毒性疾病，具有从无症状到危重和死亡的广泛临床疾病。对病毒的免疫反应可能在最终的临床结果中发挥重要作用。据推测，炎性过度活动或“细胞因子风暴”可能会导致严重新冠肺炎的临床恶化。炎症(或细胞因子)水平高的患者被发现患有更严重的疾病，更有可能死亡。因此，我们有必要揭示新冠肺炎的炎症反应，这既是为了识别有恶化风险的患者，也是为了确定针对免疫反应的治疗启动的潜在阈值。 为了做到这一点，我们需要快速、高效、准确地测量细胞因子水平的技术。我们的目标是开发一种植根于新材料化学的技术，来测量细胞因子水平以及针对SARS-CoV-2抗体的抗体。这项技术基于用不同金属原子编码的微米大小的塑料微珠的制备，其中每个编码微珠的表面覆盖有捕获生物分子(抗体或抗原)，以结合从COVD-19患者收集的生物液中的疾病生物标记物。通过这种方法，我们可以在每个患者样本中检测到8种不同的细胞因子。这项技术可以扩展到在每个样本中检测32种细胞因子和抗体。它还允许使用二次样本条形码，以便在一次测试中分析多达20个患者样本，其中结果可以在1小时内获得。在开发和部署这项技术后，我们将使用来自新冠肺炎患者的临床样本来表征免疫反应，并进行“血清监测”，以识别和表征以前感染新冠肺炎的患者。

COVID-19 is a novel viral illness, with a wide spectrum of clinical illness from asymptomatic to critical illness and death. The immune response to the virus may play an important role in the ultimate clinical outcome. It has been hypothesized that an inflammatory overactivity or "cytokine storm" may drive clinical deterioration in severe COVID-19. Patients with high levels of inflammation (or cytokines) have been found to have more severe disease and are more likely to die. It is therefore essential for us to unravel the inflammatory response to COVID-19, both to identify patients at-risk for deterioration and to define potential thresholds for initiation of therapies that target the immune response. In order to do this, we need technologies to rapidly, efficiently, accurately measure cytokine levels. We aim to develop a technology, rooted in novel materials chemistry, to measure cytokine levels and as well antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 antibody. This technology is based on the preparation of micrometre-sized plastic beads encoded with different metal atoms in which each encoded bead surface is coated with a capture biomolecule (antibody or antigen) to bind disease biomarkers from biological fluids collected from COVD-19 patients. In this way we can detecting 8 different cytokines in each patient sample. The technology can be expanded to detect 32 cytokines and antibodies in each sample. It also allows one to use secondary sample barcoding in order to analyze up to 20 patient samples in single test, where results can be acquired within a 1-hour timeframe. Upon development and deployment of this technology, we will use clinical samples from patients with COVID-19 to characterize the immune response and to conduct "serosurveillance" to identify and characterize patients who have been previously infected with COVID-19.