The bio-barcode method developed by Mirkin and colleagues (Nam et al., 2003) is designed to amplify extremely low levels of protein or oligonucleotide in solution. The method involves getting the scarce proteins to bind to gold particles festooned with polyclonal antibodies—in this case, ADDL antibodies developed by Klein and colleagues, who have found ADDLs to be elevated in AD brain and in AD transgenic mice (Chang et al., 2003; Gong et al., 2003; also see ARF related news story). The gold particle has also been tagged with thousands of identical single strands of DNA, which amplify the ADDL signal. A specific sequence has been chosen to uniquely identify ADDLs, thus the barcode analogy. Mirkin and colleagues suggest that many different scarce proteins can be assayed at once, each having a unique DNA "barcode."

The ADDL-gold-DNA cluster is isolated by means of another molecule complex—a magnetic particle tagged with ADDL monoclonal antibodies. Magnets pull the combined complex out of solution, and the DNA is separated from the gold and quantified. Mirkin's group reports that the bio-barcode method has proven capable of detecting attomolar quantities. That equals some 18 to 20 copies of a given protein in 10 microliters of solution, according to the authors.

Klein and colleagues hypothesized that traces of ADDLs might diffuse out from brain tissue into the CSF. In the current pilot study, led by first author Dimitra Georganopoulou, the researchers found that ADDL concentrations in the CSF of 15 AD patients were consistently higher than those in 15 age-matched controls. Only two of the AD patients had an ADDL concentration in the range of the control people: One of these had little clinical evidence of the disease (evidenced by a high MMSE score), and the other had pathological evidence of infarctions.

The authors note that any other scarce pathogenic AD markers found in the CSF could also be assayed in this fashion, potentially providing more powerful predictive value. Also, they write, "it suggests that the soluble pools of ADDLs that exist in the human brain extend to the CSF, and that elevated levels of ADDLs correlate with the presence of the disease."—Hakon Heimer.

Reference:
Georganopoulou DG, Chang L, Nam J-M, Thaxton CS, Mufson EJ, Klein WL, Mirkin CA. Nanoparticle-based detection in cerebral spinal fluid of a soluble pathogenic biomarker for Alzheimer's disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Feb 4; [Epub ahead of print] Abstract