Autoantibody profiling on high-density protein microarrays for biomarker discovery in the cerebrospinal fluid

Detection of autoantibodies, which are involved in tissue injury and/or the reporters from the immune system of various pathologic events, has an important potential for diagnosis, prognosis, disease staging and treatment selection. This explains the interest for new proteomics technologies, such as the high-density protein microarray used here, that allow a high-throughput, multiplexed and sensitive detection of specific autoantibodies. So far, most of the research has been performed on blood. In this note, we focus on the cerebrospinal fluid in an attempt to address autoimmune events associated with neurological disorders. Importantly, the cerebrospinal fluid is quite different from the blood in terms of protein composition and concentration. We had therefore to adapt the available blood protocols. We present here the result of our optimization that will be useful to carry out full scale immunological studies of the cerebrospinal fluid using high-density protein microarrays. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.