Translational Medicine
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-1025
ISSN: 2161-1025
Ying Mu*, Athena Keene, Heba Degheidy, Zhiwei Zhang, Catherine Li, Chandramallika Ghosh, James Weaver and Marilyn Lightfoote
Biomarkers are commonly used in toxicology for risk assessment that offers distinct and obvious advantages. We constructed a new in vitro study model where Dendritic Cells (DC) served as a biomodulator. Differentially expressed surface markers on DC after a 24 hours exposure to medical device relevant metal-allergens and metalnonallergens were considered as biomarker candidates for the identification and development. Interestingly, we found new functional and dose dependent responses of CD16 on the DCs due to significant down-regulation following exposure to 8 metal-allergens and while the expression remained unchanged when exposed to 10 metalnonallergens by flow cytometry. The statistical evaluation on CD16 alone yielded p value <0.0001, 88% of sensitivity, 90% of specificity and 89% of accuracy based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. We also confirmed that the protein CD86 alone consistently acts as an informative biomarker in prediction of allergenicity for tested materials.