Out of the Laboratory and Into the Field: Validation of Portable Cell Culture Protocols.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Field-based research on inflammation and health is typically limited to baseline measures of circulating cytokines or acute-phase proteins, whereas laboratory-based studies can pursue a more dynamic approach with ex vivo cell culture methods. The laboratory infrastructure required for culturing leukocytes limits application in community-based settings, which in turn limits scientific understandings of how psychosocial, behavioral, and contextual factors influence the regulation of inflammation. We aim to address this gap by validating two "field-friendly" cell culture protocols, one using a small volume of venous whole blood and another using finger-stick capillary whole blood.

Methods

We evaluated the performance of both protocols against a standard laboratory-bas

SUBMITTER: McDade TW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8016709 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature