From Home to Transcriptome: Comparing the Transcriptomic Profile of Induced Immune Response via Lipopolysaccharide Stimulation in homeRNA and Venous Blood

Remote blood sampling offers multiple advantages over
traditional
clinic-based blood sampling studies, including greater patient inclusion,
more frequent sampling, and broader geographical reach. Combining
remote blood sampling with transcriptomic analysis opens potential
in translational applications for capturing acute and dynamic immune
responses to various exposures. In this study, we establish the feasibility
of homeRNA, a capillary blood collection and RNAlater-based stabilization kit, for use in downstream total RNA-sequencing
applications via capturing a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory
response. We also compared the baseline gene expression profiles and
induced inflammatory response following LPS stimulation between homeRNA-stabilized
samples and venous blood stabilized with RNAlater or PAXgene. We found that homeRNA was successfully able to capture
an inflammatory response to LPS, specifically targeting various cytokines
(e.g., IL6, IL12B, IL1B), chemokines (e.g., CCL3, CXCL10, CCL4), and other transcriptional factors in the
toll-like receptor pathway, the primary pathway activated during LPS
stimulation. Importantly, we also found that homeRNA captured a LPS-induced
inflammatory response comparable to that of venous blood samples stabilized
with either RNAlater or PAXgene. Overall, this work
demonstrates that the homeRNA platform is compatible with downstream
total RNA-sequencing analysis and can capture transcriptomic immune
responses to a known stimulus which are analogous to results in traditional
stabilized venous blood samples.