Biomarker Analysis

The TBI-REPORTER network has experience and capability to deliver assessment and analysis of a range of biomarkers, assessed using the latest available technologies, across the spectrum of biofluids. A key analysis centre is the UK DRI Biomarker Factory (https://ukdri.ac.uk/biomarkerfactory), a high-performance analytical facility for fluid biomarker development, validation and measurement, representing the global gold standard in the field. The facility accepts samples from researchers and companies internationally, accelerating progress in TBI.

The UK DRI Biomarker Factory was established in 2021 with a UK DRI award of £1m and rapidly scaled thereafter. It is led by UK DRI Group Leader Professor Henrik Zetterberg and UK DRI Senior Research Fellow Dr Amanda Heslegrave. It has processed over 25k samples and collaborated on over 140 projects to date.

UK DRI Biomarker Factory State of the art facilities include:

NULISA technology by Alamar: New ultrasensitive technology to allow multiplexing of a large panel of biomarkers for neuroinflammation
and neurodegeneration in one sample. Ours is the first lab in the UK (and second in Europe) to have this technology.
Four Quanterix Simoa HDx machines to support sensitive fluid biomarker measurement of small-, medium- and large-scale (2000+
samples) projects.
Ultrasensitive Single Molecule Counting (SMCxPRO) from Merck; Meso Scale Discovery instruments from MSD; Olink platform; Luminex technology; regular ELISA platforms.

In addition to the biomarker analytic facilities available at the UK DRI Biomarker Factory, TBI-REPORTER also has access to additional technologies – either within the consortium, or through external collaborations:

Genome wide association studies and candidate gene analysis
Transcriptomics (Davenport, Wellcome Sanger Institute)
Metagenomics (Pericord, University of Cambridge)
Metabolomics (Oresic, Orebro University, Sweden)
Protein aggregation assays (Klenerman, University of Cambridge)
Immunophenotyping (Needham, University of Cambridge)
Autoimmunity (Needham, University of Cambridge)

TBI-REPORTER has access to the full range of protein biomarkers of brain injury and neurodegeneration (top panel). This can be coupled with a larger range of biomarkers of host response and vascular health (middle
panel) to differentiate biomarker clusters of major illness, trauma generally, and TBI specifically. Such data can be combined with detailed immunophenotyping (bottom left) and a wider range of variables (genetics, expression profiles, autoantibody screens, metabolomics, metagenomics), in serum, CSF and brain microdialysate, to identify subgroups of TBI with specific prognostic and therapy response characteristics (bottom right)6,7,8