Effectively utilizing the Sponsor Contract Research Organization interaction for successful implementation of critical flow cytometry in the clinic.

As the number of therapeutic modalities expand, and the field of scientific research evolves toward finding treatment solutions for complex and rare disease, an ability to demonstrate efficacy through biomarker end points in clinical development studies is becoming increasingly important. Implementing flow cytometry in a clinical setting is challenging and many sponsor organizations take a hybrid approach, developing complex analytical methods internally before identifying and forming partnerships with contract research organizations to conduct the formal analytical method validation and sample bioanalysis. Ensuring that these interactions are effective is critical to the delivery of high-quality, impactful clinical data.

Protease-activated receptor-2 activation contributes to house dust mite-induced IgE responses in mice.

Aeroallergens such as house dust mite (HDM), cockroach, and grass or tree pollen are innocuous substances that can induce allergic sensitization upon inhalation. The serine proteases present in these allergens are thought to activate the protease-activated receptor (PAR)-2, on the airway epithelium, thereby potentially inducing allergic sensitization at the expense of inhalation tolerance. We hypothesized that the proteolytic activity of allergens may play an important factor in the allergenicity to house dust mite and is essential to overcome airway tolerance.

Alveolar macrophages develop from fetal monocytes that differentiate into long-lived cells in the first week of life via GM-CSF.

Tissue-resident macrophages can develop from circulating adult monocytes or from primitive yolk sac-derived macrophages. The precise ontogeny of alveolar macrophages (AMFs) is unknown. By performing BrdU labeling and parabiosis experiments in adult mice, we found that circulating monocytes contributed minimally to the steady-state AMF pool.