Whitepaper: Development and Validation of Bio-Plex Pro™ Human Chemokine Assays

A new Bio-Plex Pro chemokine panel was validated for quantifying 40 human chemokines in one sample offering a significant advantage to researchers…

A new Bio-Plex Pro chemokine panel was validated for quantifying 40 human chemokines in one sample offering a significant advantage to researchers collecting combinatorial chemokine information with a limited sample volume.  

The chemokine system belongs to a large family of inflammatory cytokines and receptors.

Approximately 50 chemokines and 20 receptors have been identified and shown to play a critical role in tumor growth, inflammatory response, infection, autoimmune disorders, neoplasm, vascular diseases, and transplant rejection (Locati et al. 2005, Slettenaar and Wilson 2006). These low molecular weight (8–10 kD) proteins can be grouped into four chemokine subfamilies (C, CC, CXC, and CX₃C) according to the number of cysteine molecules and the spacing of cysteine residues (Figure 1). The C chemokines, called lymphotactins, are found in high levels in the spleen, thymus, intestine, and peripheral blood leukocytes. The CC chemokines have the first two cysteines in adjacent positions. They appear to attract monocytes, basophils, eosinophils, and lymphocytes, including NK cells. The CXC (where X denotes any amino acid) chemokines have the first two of four total cysteines separated by an amino acid. Most of them are chemo-attractants for neutrophils. The CX₃C chemokines include a single molecule with three amino acids between the first two cysteine residues. The only CX₃C chemokine discovered to date is fractalkine. It is both secreted and tethered to the surface of the cell that expresses it, thereby serving as both a chemo-attractant and an adhesion molecule.