Strategy for Microscale Extraction and Proteome Profiling of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Anal Chem. 2022 Jun 28;94(25):8827-8832. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c05365. Epub 2022 Jun 14.

Abstract

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) play vital roles in physiological and pathological processes and represent a rich source for disease monitoring. Typical molecular profiling on PBMCs involves the sorting of cell subsets and thus requires a large volume of peripheral blood (PB), which impedes the clinical practicability of omics tools in PBMC measurements. It would be clinically invaluable to develop a convenient approach for preparing PBMCs from small volumes of PB and for deep proteome profiling of PBMCs. To this end, here, we designed an apparatus (PBMC-mCap) for microscale enrichment and proteome analysis of PBMCs, which pushed the needed PB volume from the normal 2 mL or higher to 100 μL or lower, comparable to the volume of a drop of finger blood. A PBMC-specific mass spectra library containing 8869 proteins and 121,956 peptides was further built, which, in combination with the optimized data-independent acquisition strategy, helped to identify 6000 and 6500 proteins from PBMCs with 100 μL and 1 mL of PB as initial materials, respectively. Further application of the strategy for PBMC proteomes revealed a steady difference between gender (male vs female) and upon stimulus (COVID-19 vaccination). For the latter, we observed differentially expressed genes and pathways involving the activation of immune cells, including the NF-κB pathway, inflammation response, and antiviral response. Our strategy for the proteome analysis of microscale PBMCs may provide a convenient clinical toolkit for disease diagnosis and healthy state monitoring.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • COVID-19*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Leukocytes, Mononuclear*
  • Male
  • Mass Spectrometry
  • Proteome / metabolism

Substances

  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • Proteome