Childhood screening for type 1 diabetes comparing automated multiplex Antibody Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) with single plex islet autoantibody radiobinding assays.

BACKGROUND: Two or more autoantibodies against either insulin (IAA), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GADA), islet antigen-2 (IA-2A) or zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8A) denote stage 1 (normoglycemia) or stage 2 (dysglycemia) type 1 diabetes prior to stage 3 type 1 diabetes. Automated multiplex Antibody Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) assays in two laboratories were compared to single plex radiobinding assays (RBA) to define threshold levels for diagnostic specificity and sensitivity. METHODS: IAA, GADA, IA-2A and ZnT8A were analysed in 1504 (54% females) population based controls (PBC), 456 (55% females) doctor's office controls (DOC) and 535 (41% females) blood donor controls (BDC) as well as in 2300 (48% females) patients newly diagnosed (1-10 years of age) with stage 3 type 1 diabetes. The thresholds for autoantibody positivity were computed in 100 10-fold cross-validations to separate patients from controls either by maximizing the χ2-statistics (chisq) or using the 98th percentile of specificity (Spec98). Mean and 95% CI for threshold, sensitivity and specificity are presented. FINDINGS: The ADAP ROC curves of the four autoantibodies showed comparable AUC in the two ADAP laboratories and were higher than RBA. Detection of two or more autoantibodies using chisq showed 0.97 (0.95, 0.99) sensitivity and 0.94 (0.91, 0.97) specificity in ADAP compared to 0.90 (0.88, 0.95) sensitivity and 0.97 (0.94, 0.98) specificity in RBA. Using Spec98, ADAP showed 0.92 (0.89, 0.95) sensitivity and 0.99 (0.98, 1.00) specificity compared to 0.89 (0.77, 0.86) sensitivity and 1.00 (0.99, 1.00) specificity in the RBA. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were higher in PBC compared to DOC and BDC. INTERPRETATION: ADAP was comparable in two laboratories, both comparable to or better than RBA, to define threshold levels for two or more autoantibodies to stage type 1 diabetes. FUNDING: Supported by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust (grant number 2009-04078), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Dnr IRC15-0067) and the Swedish Research Council, Strategic Research Area (Dnr 2009-1039). AL was supported by the DiaUnion collaborative study, co-financed by EU Interreg ÖKS, Capital Region of Denmark, Region Skåne and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Advances in risk predictive performance of pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes via the multiplex Antibody-Detection-by-Agglutination-PCR assay.

Introduction: Achieving early diagnosis of pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes is critical to reduce potentially life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at symptom onset, link patients to FDA approved therapeutics that can delay disease progression and support novel interventional drugs development. The presence of two or more islet autoantibodies in pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes patients indicates high-risk of progression to clinical manifestation. Method: Herein, we characterized the capability of multiplex ADAP assay to predict type 1 diabetes progression. We obtained retrospective coded sera from a cohort of 48 progressors and 44 non-progressors from the NIDDK DPT-1 study. Result: The multiplex ADAP assay and radiobinding assays had positive predictive value (PPV)/negative predictive value (NPV) of 68%/92% and 67%/66% respectively. The improved NPV stemmed from 12 progressors tested positive for multiple islet autoantibodies by multiplex ADAP assay but not by RBA. Furthermore, 6 out of these 12 patients tested positive for multiple islet autoantibodies by RBA in subsequent sampling events with a median delay of 2.8 years compared to multiplex ADAP assay. Discussion: In summary, multiplex ADAP assay could be an ideal tool for type 1 diabetes risk testing due to its sample-sparing nature (4µL), non-radioactiveness, compatibility with widely available real-time qPCR instruments and favorable risk prediction capability.

Detection of neutralizing antibodies against multiple SARS-CoV-2 strains in dried blood spots using cell-free PCR.

An easily implementable serological assay to accurately detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) neutralizing antibodies is urgently needed to better track herd immunity, vaccine efficacy and vaccination rates. Herein, we report the Split-Oligonucleotide Neighboring Inhibition Assay (SONIA) which uses real-time qPCR to measure the ability of neutralizing antibodies to block binding between DNA-barcoded viral spike protein subunit 1 and the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor protein. The SONIA neutralizing antibody assay using finger-prick dried blood spots displays 91-97% sensitivity and 100% specificity in comparison to the live-virus neutralization assays using matched serum specimens for multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants-of-concern. The multiplex version of this neutralizing antibody assay, using easily collectable finger-prick dried blood spots, can be a valuable tool to help reveal the impact of age, pre-existing health conditions, waning immunity, different vaccination schemes and the emergence of new variants-of-concern.

Multiplex agglutination-PCR (ADAP) autoantibody assays compared to radiobinding autoantibodies in type 1 diabetes and celiac disease.

Multiplex Antibody-Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) assay was compared to singleplex standard radiobinding assays (RBA) to detect autoantibodies against insulin (IAA), GAD65 (GADA), islet antigen-2 (IA-2A), ZnT8 (ZnT8A) and tissue transglutaminase (TGA). Serum samples from 273 (114F/158M), 15-73 years of age healthy controls and 227 (109F/118M) newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes children, 1-11 years of age, were analyzed in both assay systems.The original WHO standard 97/550 and in-house reference standards for RBA were compared to ADAP. The ADAP and RBA generated parallel reference standards in all assays except TGA. Lower detection limits were observed in the ADAP assay for GADA,IAA and ZnT8A, markedly for TGA, but not for IA-2A. The Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve AUC analyses for pairwise comparison of ADAP with RBA showed no difference for GADA (n.s.), ADAP greater AUC for IAA (p = 0.005), RBA greater AUC for IA-2A (p = 0.0004) and ZnT8A (p < 0.0001) while ADAP TGA had a greater AUC compared to both RBA TGA-IgG (p < 0.0001) and TGA-IgA (p < 0.0001). These data suggest that the ADAP and RBA assays are comparable with equal performance for GADA, better ADAP performance for IAA while the RBA showed better performance in both IA-2A and ZnT8A associated with greater heterogeneity in autoantibody levels. The simultaneous analysis of 5 different autoantibodies by ADAP in sample volume reduced to only 4 µL and at an increased lower detection limit in all assays except IA-2A makes the ADAP automated autoantibody assay a distinct advantage for high throughput screening.

Automation of a multiplex agglutination-PCR (ADAP) type 1 diabetes (T1D) assay for the rapid analysis of islet autoantibodies.

Screening for islet autoantibody markers to identify individuals who are at high risk for developing type 1 diabetes (T1D), often years in advance of clinical symptoms, is both a challenge and a necessity. Identifying high-risk individuals not only reduces hospitalization and rates of life-threatening diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA), but also directs enrollment into prevention trials that require patients who are in the early stages of disease. Here we describe an automated high-throughput multiplex islet autoantibody assay that integrates antibody detection by agglutination-PCR (ADAP) chemistry on the Hamilton Microlab STAR liquid handling platform. The automated system features on-deck thermal cycling and plate sealing to minimize the level of human intervention. The automated multiplex ADAP T1D assay performed similarly to that of manual methods using two distinct cohorts of clinical specimens obtained from the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University and the 2018 Islet Autoantibody Standardization Program (IASP). Notably, the automated assay requires only 4 µL of serum sample for the simultaneous analysis of GAD, IA-2 and insulin autoantibodies. Up to 96 samples may be processed in as little as 3 hours, and the only user intervention required is to transfer a final sealed 96-well plate containing PCR amplicons onto a quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) instrument for quantification. The automated system is particularly well suited for large-scale analysis of islet autoantibodies in a reproducible, timely, and cost-effective manner.

Sensitive and Specific Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Using a High-Throughput, Fully Automated Liquid-Handling Robotic System.

As of July 22, 2020, more than 14.7 million infections of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), have been confirmed globally. Serological assays are essential for community screening, assessing infection prevalence, aiding identification of infected patients, and enacting appropriate treatment and quarantine protocols in the battle against this rapidly expanding pandemic. Antibody detection by agglutination-PCR (ADAP) is a pure solution phase immunoassay that generates a PCR amplifiable signal when patient antibodies agglutinate DNA-barcoded antigen probes into a dense immune complex. Here, we present an ultrasensitive and high-throughput automated liquid biopsy assay based on the Hamilton Microlab ADAP STAR automated liquid-handling platform, which was developed and validated for the qualitative detection of total antibodies against spike protein 1 (S1) of SARS-CoV-2 that uses as little as 4 µL of serum. To assess the clinical performance of the ADAP assay, 57 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients and 223 control patients were tested. The assay showed a sensitivity of 98% (56/57) and a specificity of 99.55% (222/223). Notably, the SARS-CoV-2-negative control patients included individuals with other common coronaviral infections, such as CoV-NL63 and CoV-HKU, which did not cross-react. In addition to high performance, the hands-free automated workstation enabled high-throughput sample processing to reduce screening workload while helping to minimize analyst contact with biohazardous samples. Therefore, the ADAP STAR liquid-handling workstation can be used as a valuable tool to address the COVID-19 global pandemic.