Search for signs of inflammatory disease

ORNL biologist Steve Kennel recently worked on a project to measure levels of a specific cytokine in samples from mice. The goal was to screen for mice that are likely to develop inflammatory diseases similar to those in humans, such as arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease.

In a study supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at ORNL, Kennel collaborated with Greg Hurst, a mass spectrometry expert in ORNL's Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division. They developed a technique that combines affinity chromatography with mass spectrometry to separate three specific cytokines out of the 100 or so different cytokines in mouse blood or fluid extracted from mouse cells.

"I obtained antibodies specific to different cytokines and attached them to beads," Kennel says. "These beads were tossed into a soup of proteins to fish out specific cytokines for analysis by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry.

"We were able to identify each cytokine. But because we had only small amounts of blood from a mouse, we were unable to detect unusually high levels of our target protein-the tumor necrosis factor alpha cytokine. So, we could not be sure these test mice were showing an inflammation response."