NEW YORK – Single-cell proteomics firm IsoPlexis said Tuesday that it has received a $2 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.
The Phase 2 grant is for work the company is doing to analyze the proteomic responses of trafficking leukocytes in patients with Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions.
IsoPlexis is developing assays on its IsoLight system for detecting the inflammatory immune response generated by cells including peripheral monocytes, highly polyfunctional secretomic T cells, and microglia and exploring whether these profiles could be used for diagnosing and monitoring inflammatory neurodegenerative diseases.
The IsoLight system uses microchips featuring arrays of thousands of microchambers that isolate individual cells from samples of interest. These chambers are then sealed with a slide patterned with groups of antibodies in a number of different spatially isolated lines. This allows the researchers to identify proteins based on the color of fluorescence produced upon binding and the location on the slide where the binding event occurs. In this way, they can multiplex well beyond the levels allowed by fluorescence readout alone.
"Immune-driven neuroinflammation is a significant contributor to the pathogenesis of diseases such as Alzheimer's," IsoPlexis CEO Sean Mackay said in a statement. "There is an urgent ongoing need for the accelerated development of novel therapeutics and diagnostics. We're excited to be developing solutions to better understand the functional mechanisms behind neuroinflammation."