If you’re developing a drug that acts on the immune system, one of the surprisingly hard problems is figuring out exactly what part of the immune system your drug hits.
This seems a bit paradoxical. If you’re developing a missile, you shoot the missile at the target, and you know what the missile hits. The target, right?
Not so simple. In human biology, you might think your drug hits only “T” cells, but the drug might actually hit “B” cells. Well, what’s the problem with that?
The problem is hitting the wrong part of the immune system might lead to seriously bad side effects, or even death in extreme cases.
As a result, scientists have developed a technique called “immune profiling” to figure out what cells of the immune system a drug is reaching. Flow cytometry is the most widely used version of immune profiling. Flow cytometry allows you to look at 6-8 protein markers on cells simultaneously, which is helpful for identifying a single type of immune cell, like T cells for example.
Imagine you have a drug aiming to do “something” to T cells. For example, you have a drug that should increase the number of T cells. When you measure the immune state with an immune profiling tool, you should see an increase in T cells.
The problem is, by focusing just on T cells (or a small subset), you can miss many important cell types, like Myeloid cells and B cells, that your drug might be affecting.
The problem is, by focusing just on T cells (or a small subset), you can miss many important cell types, like Myeloid cells and B cells, that your drug might be affecting.
To illustrate this, let’s try to take on a similar problem: inflation.
Imagine you want to measure inflation in an economy. You need to look at prices, right? To see if the prices are going up, and at what rate.
Now, what if you went to Costco, and looked at hotdog prices? You would say there’s 0% inflation in the economy. Hotdogs have been $1.50 since 1985 at Costco.
Once you start measuring the price increases of milk, gas, coffee, and energy — you find out inflation is closer to 10%. So by measuring more prices in an economy, you get a better idea of what inflation really is.
The same concept applies to immune drug development. You measure more and more immune cells, you get a better picture of what your drug does to the immune system. And that’s where mass cytometry comes in. Rather than measure 6-8 markers on only T cells, you can measure ~44 markers across many immune cell types simultaneously. This ‘high-parameter’ immune profiling ensures you’re not basing the success of your drug program on only a subset of data.
Or, scientifically speaking, on the price of a Costco hotdog.
If you’re interested in high-parameter immune profiling for your drug, contact us to see how we can help you.
