Gene expression profiling of CD8+ T cells predicts prognosis in patients with Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis.

Crohn disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are increasingly common, chronic forms of inflammatory bowel disease. The behavior of these diseases varies unpredictably among patients. Identification of reliable prognostic biomarkers would enable treatment to be personalized so that patients destined to experience aggressive disease could receive appropriately potent therapies from diagnosis, while those who will experience more indolent disease are not exposed to the risks and side effects of unnecessary immunosuppression.

Novel expression signatures identified by transcriptional analysis of separated leucocyte subsets in systemic lupus erythematosus and vasculitis.

Objective: To optimise a strategy for identifying gene expression signatures differentiating systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis that provide insight into disease pathogenesis and identify biomarkers.

Methods: 44 vasculitis patients, 13 SLE patients and 25 age and sex-matched controls were enrolled. CD4 and CD8 T cells, B cells, monocytes and neutrophils were isolated from each patient and, together with unseparated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), were hybridised to spotted oligonucleotide microarrays.

Microarray analysis of human leucocyte subsets: the advantages of positive selection and rapid purification.

Background: For expression profiling to have a practical impact in the management of immune-related disease it is essential that it can be applied to peripheral blood cells. Early studies have used total peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and as a consequence the majority of the disease-related signatures identified have simply reflected differences in the relative abundance of individual cell types between patients and controls. To identify cell-specific changes in transcription it would be necessary to profile purified leucocyte subsets.

Gene expression profiles of metabolic enzyme transcripts in Alzheimer's disease.

The successfully functioning brain is a heavy user of metabolic energy. Alzheimer's disease, in which cognitive faculties decline, may be due, at least in part, to metabolic insufficiency. Using microarray analysis and quantitative RT-PCR, the expression of mRNA transcripts involved in glucose metabolism was investigated in Alzheimer's diseased post-mortem human hippocampal samples.