Volume 8 Issue 3, March 2024

The discovery of antibodies that bind with high affinity to clinically relevant antigens can be sped up by leveraging next-generation sequencing to screen hundreds of millions of antibody–antigen interactions.

Genetic and cellular drivers of the cellular uptake of SARS-CoV-2 can be screened at high throughput via droplet microfluidics and size-exclusion methods for the analysis of the formation of fusions between cells expressing the virus’s spike protein and cells expressing the protein’s receptor.

Sensing changes in ionic current as barcoded DNA translocates through solid-state nanopores allows the study of how nucleotide sequences alter the DNA-binding specificity of the catalytically inactive Cas9 ribonucleoprotein complex.

Barcoding cells with microparticles that emit near-infrared laser light enables the use of flow cytometry to track the dynamics of single cells by using more markers and fewer colours.

We developed OxoScan-MS, a mass spectrometric acquisition technology for high-throughput quantification of glycopeptides. When applied to plasma of patients with COVID-19, OxoScan-MS revealed differential glycosylation in disease-relevant proteins. This approach offers potential for large-scale applications, moving beyond traditional protein abundance measurements to explore glycosylated protein biomarkers.

A high-throughput method leveraging the Illumina HiSeq platform to screen in the order of 10⁸ individual antibody–antigen interactions within 3 days facilitates the rapid discovery of antibodies to clinically relevant targets.

A technique for the large-scale mass-spectrometric quantification of glycopeptides in plasma samples allows for the profiling of more than a thousand glycopeptide features in plasma samples, as shown for patients with COVID-19.

Subpopulations of functional killer cells in co-culture can be identified and sorted by an assay that detects an intracellular fluorescent protein from lysed cells on the surface of the lysing killer cells.

A high-throughput microfluidic method for the analysis of the secretion levels of large populations of immune cells allows for the identification of kinase-coding genes regulating interferon-gamma secretion by CD4⁺ T cells.

A machine-learning model trained on interactions between oral drugs and intestinal drug transporters obtained by modulating their expression in intact porcine tissue can be used to predict drug–transporter and drug–drug interactions.

High-throughput methods based on droplet microfluidics and size-exclusion selection allow for the identification of genetic and cellular drivers of syncytium formation induced by the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and of inhibitors of such cell–cell fusion.

Barcoding individual cells with microparticles emitting near-infrared laser light enables the use of flow cytometry for the measurement of time-resolved single-cell dynamics with more markers and fewer colours.

The binding specificity of catalytically inactive Cas9 to any pre-defined short sequence of double-stranded DNA can be detected by sensing changes in ionic current as suitably designed barcoded DNA translocates through solid-state nanopores.