Infectious Disease

August is National Immunization Awareness Month, intended to encourage people to stay up to date on necessary vaccinations. Because health risks associated with COVID-19 are mitigated by vaccines and boosters, this week's blog focuses on current understanding of COVID-19 and immune health.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues with new cases on the rise, researchers are working to gain a better understanding of mechanisms underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection and immune factors that contribute to long COVID. Characterizing how immune cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 can help to identify therapeutic targets, develop next generation vaccines, and stratify patients at risk for severe COVID-19. That being said, many analytical techniques miss the critical cell attributes providing key functional data.

IsoPlexis' functional phenotyping platform, which uses multiplexed panels tailored for different immune applications, allows researchers to easily measure cytokine secretions at both single-cell and bulk levels. By characterizing immune cell function using IsoPlexis' IsoCode Single-Cell Secretome and CodePlex Secretome panels, researchers have uncovered mechanisms of how immune cells are associated with moderate and severe disease, factors contributing to long COVID, and more.

How IsoPlexis' Functional Proteomics has Uncovered Key Findings about COVID-19

• A study published in Immunity compared markers of inflammation from airway and plasma samples from COVID-19 subjects and found that immune response was primarily mediated through immune cells found in the airway, not plasma. These results provide a rationale for targeting therapies to the airway, rather than systemically, to prevent COVID-19-related respiratory disorders.
• Single-cell analysis of immune cells was described in a paper published in Cell that sought to identify immune factors related to COVID-19 disease severity. The authors discovered that only monocytes were associated with moderate and severe COVID-19, indicating the potential drivers of a pro-inflammatory disease state.
• Monocytes were also characterized in a recent publication in Cell that identified key factors associated with patients with long COVID, or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). By measuring how many cells secreted more than one cytokine relative to cell populations and the intensity of those secretions, researchers were able to characterize how monocytes, T cells, and NK cells function in PASC and contribute to convalescence.

These findings and more COVID-19 studies are detailed in the IsoPlexis Proteomic Suite for COVID-19 App Note.

Advancing Research with IsoPlexis' Proteomic Product Suite

IsoPlexis' functional proteomics platform has been used across numerous research areas to gain unique insights into disease progression, treatment response and potency, and mechanisms of resistance. By combining multiplexed analysis with a streamlined workflow, IsoPlexis' proteomics platform lets researchers generate and analyze data with a fraction of the hands-on time of other systems, leading to accelerated research, deeper insights, and improved outcomes.