High-plex protein profiling on cytospin slides with bronchoalveolar lavage cells from asthma and COPD

Abstract

Protein profiling of whole cells can accurately define cell subsets specific to disease identity and/or severity. Preserving whole cells on cytospin slides is common practice but is often used only for differential counts. Here we ran two studies and successfully applied a high-plex protein panel using the NanoString GeoMx, quantifying up to 47 proteins (of immune, cell death, and MAPK signalling markers) in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cytospins from the four major cell types: macrophages, neutrophils, type-2 granulocytes and lymphocytes. Despite the small sample size for this feasibility study, several significant differences between disease and controls within several BAL cell types for both the asthma cohort (n=21) and the COPD cohort (n=20) were found. Overall, we believe applying this method can maximise biomarker discover of any precious preserved cytospin clinical samples and that the significant disease specific cell subsets discovered during the method testing are worthy of future investigation.