Developing Influenza Antigen Microarrays for Seroprofiling

摘要

Peptide and protein microarrays remain under-exploited tools in dissecting the immunogenic profiles of infections. Though antibody arrays have been conveniently developed for multiplexed detection of pathogenic contaminants in biological and environmental samples, it has perhaps been a greater challenge to produce antigen arrays, containing immunogenic peptide epitopes, for the detection of host exposure to infection. Herein we describe the development of such an antigen microarray platform against influenza, for potential applications in diagnostics, epitope mapping and potentially vaccine development. We have thus far successfully expressed a collection of 8 haemagglutinins (HAs) and 2 H1N1 targets for immobilization onto microarrays. This has been successful in yielding microarray binding profiles with anti-influenza antibodies spiked in human serum. We aim to expand on our antigen panel and build a wider influenza proteome array to aid in the serodiagnostics of influenza infections.