Rationale Tissue ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury underlies several leading causes of death such as heart-attack and stroke. The lack of clinical therapies for IR injury may be partly due to the difficulty of adapting IR injury models to high-throughput screening (HTS). Objective To develop a model of IR injury that is both physiologically relevant and amenable to HTS. Methods and Results A micro-plate based respirometry apparatus was used. Controlling gas flow in the plate head space, coupled with the instrument’s mechanical systems, yielded a 24 well model of IR injury in which H9c2 cardiomyocytes were transiently trapped in a small volume, rendering them ischemic. Following initial validation with known protective molecules, the model was used to screen a 2000 molecule library, with post IR cell death as an endpoint. pO2 and pH monitoring in each well also afforded metabolic data. Ten protective, detrimental and inert molecules from the screen were subsequently tested in a Langendorff perfused heart model of IR injury, revealing strong correlations between the screening endpoint and both recovery of cardiac function (negative r2=0.66), and infarct size (positive, r2=0.62). Relationships between the effects of added molecules on cellular bioenergetics, and protection against IR injury, were also studied. Conclusion This novel cell-based assay can predict either protective or detrimental effects on IR injury in the intact heart. Its application may help identify therapeutic or harmful molecules.

Bordetella pertussis (Bp) is the etiologic agent of pertussis (whooping cough), a highly communicable infection. Although pertussis is vaccine preventable, in recent years there has been increased incidence, despite high vaccine coverage. Possible reasons for the rise in cases include the following: Bp strain adaptation, waning vaccine immunity, increased surveillance, and improved clinical diagnostics. A pertussis outbreak impacted California (USA) in 2010; children and preadolescents were the most affected but the burden of disease fell mainly on infants. To identify protein biomarkers associated with this pertussis outbreak, we report a whole cellular protein characterization of six Bp isolates plus the pertussis acellular vaccine strain Bp Tohama I (T), utilizing gel-free proteomics-based mass spectrometry (MS). MS/MS tryptic peptide detection and protein database searching combined with western blot analysis revealed three Bp isolates in this study had markedly reduced detection of pertactin (Prn), a subunit of pertussis acellular vaccines. Additionally, antibody affinity capture technologies were implemented using anti-Bp T rabbit polyclonal antisera and whole cellular proteins to identify putative immunogens. Proteome profiling could shed light on pathogenesis and potentially lay the foundation for reduced infection transmission strategies and improved clinical diagnostics.

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