Kinetic Profiling of Diagnostic Antibodies using Peptide-Microarrays

Katja Köhler

The clinical diagnostic of nephropathy associated with polyoma virus type BK (BKV) after transplantation is a difficult task. The risk factors which influence the outbreak are multiple and currently not fully understood. Therefore early identification of viremia and the estimation of the balance between viral infection, immune status and immunosuppressive therapy provide the opportunity to minimize immunosupression in an effort to control BKV. Specific antimicrobial antibodies present in the sera of renal transplantation patients who developed a BKV nephropathy can be used as serological biomarkers to monitor the immune state and the outbreak of infection.
Protein and Peptide microarrays are a powerful tool to discover disease biomarkers present in the sera of renal transplantation patients who developed a BKV nephropathy. The assay to characterize antigen-antibody interactions is based on the Biacore Flexchip System that provides surface plasmon resonance (SPR) data for studying kinetics of up to 400 interactions. The kinetic data represent the individual immune response profile of patients, through which the disease-specific antibody repertoire accompanied by the risk of nephropathy caused allograft failure can be defined.

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