Zeming Kerwin Kwek, Llanora Genevieve, Quek Kaiyun, Goh Chin Ren, Ng Nicholas Zhi Heng, Han Jongyoon, Yeo Kee Thai
Critical Analytics for Manufacturing of Personalized Medicine, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Neonatology, KK Women's & Children's Hospital, Singapore, Singapore.
Pediatr Res. 2025 Mar 31. doi: 10.1038/s41390-025-03952-y.
There is a current, absence of reliable, blood-sparing, diagnostic tools to measure and trend real-time changes in the levels of inflammation and its effects on the immune cells in the infant.
We deployed the BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants (BLIPI) system in the neonatal intensive care unit to describe immune cell biophysical profiles using 50 microliters of blood per sample from term and preterm infants.
A total of 19 infants (8 term, 11 preterm) were recruited and 24 blood samples were collected in their first month. Based on the profiles of immune cells' size and deformation, there was a clear distinction between term and preterm infants, with 48/50 markers significantly different. A preterm infant with late-onset bacterial sepsis had notable size and deformability differences compared to the rest of the preterm cohort. There was a significant correlation between immune cell biophysical profiles and clinical markers such as C-reactive protein, white blood cell counts, and immature-to-total neutrophil (I:T) ratios, with Pearson correlation coefficients for linear regression models of 0.98, 0.97 and 0.94 respectively.
This study highlights the potential for the biophysical immune cell profiling system to provide an overview of the infant's current immune activation and response.
We present a novel, minimally invasive diagnostic system that leverages the physical properties of immune cells to provide a rapid and direct assessment of the immune status, requiring 20 times less blood volume than standard tests. This study demonstrates the potential of a compact, deployable system that is capable of performing biophysical profiling to assess immune cell activation in term and preterm infants, by revealing distinct differences in cell size and deformation between groups. The system's sensitive, quantitative measures were correlated with routine clinical biomarkers, highlighting its ability to provide a rapid, minimally invasive, real-time monitoring of neonatal immune status.
目前缺乏可靠的、能节省血液的诊断工具来测量和追踪婴儿体内炎症水平及其对免疫细胞影响的实时变化。
我们在新生儿重症监护病房部署了婴儿生物物理免疫分析（BLIPI）系统，以使用来自足月儿和早产儿的每份50微升血液来描述免疫细胞的生物物理特征。
共招募了19名婴儿（8名足月儿，11名早产儿），并在他们出生后的第一个月收集了24份血样。根据免疫细胞大小和变形的特征，足月儿和早产儿之间有明显区别，50个标志物中有48个有显著差异。一名患有迟发性细菌性败血症的早产儿与其他早产儿队列相比，在大小和变形能力上有明显差异。免疫细胞生物物理特征与临床标志物如C反应蛋白、白细胞计数和未成熟与总中性粒细胞（I:T）比值之间存在显著相关性，线性回归模型的皮尔逊相关系数分别为0.98、0.97和0.94。
本研究强调了生物物理免疫细胞分析系统提供婴儿当前免疫激活和反应概况的潜力。
我们提出了一种新颖的、微创诊断系统，该系统利用免疫细胞的物理特性来快速直接评估免疫状态，所需血量比标准检测少20倍。本研究通过揭示不同组之间细胞大小和变形的明显差异，证明了一种紧凑、可部署的系统的潜力，该系统能够进行生物物理分析以评估足月儿和早产儿的免疫细胞激活。该系统灵敏的定量测量与常规临床生物标志物相关，突出了其提供新生儿免疫状态快速、微创、实时监测的能力。
