Fingerstick Blood-Test for Rapid Estimation of Absorbed Radiation Dose

We developed scalable radiation dosimeter based on non-coding miR-150 (radiation sensitive) normalized to endogenous miR-23a (radiation insensitive). This nanoString assay revealed the expression of miR-150 and miR-23a in normal healthy volunteers serum blood cell subsets. Healthy leukopaks were used to pull down specific blood cell subsets such as T-cells, B-cells, NK cells, HSCs and platelets using immunobead antibodies (CD3, CD19, CD56, CD34 and CD61 respectively). Whole blood (WBCs), serum and RBCs were also used to comapre miR-150 and miR-23a percentage of overlap and investigate the percentage of contribution of these miRNAs by blood subsets to the circulation. 100 ng of total miRNA was used in case of blood cell subsets whereas 5 ng of total miRNA was used in case of WBCs and RBCs (due to abundance of miR-451 which intereferes with other miRNA counts) for nanoString assay. nanoString data is from three different leukopak isolation. Raw data from the nanoString assay were technically normalized followed by top 100 miRNA normalization strategy.