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.