Out of the Lab and Into the Field: Validation of Portable Cell Culture Protocols.

Objective Field-based research on inflammation and health is typically limited to baseline measures of circulating cytokines or acute phase proteins, while lab-based studies can pursue a more dynamic approach with ex vivo cell culture methods. The laboratory infrastructure required for culturing leukocytes limits application in community-based settings, which in turn limits scientific understandings of how psychosocial, behavioral, and contextual factors influence the regulation of inflammation. We aim to address this gap by validating two "field-friendly" cell culture protocols, one using a small volume of venous whole blood, and another using finger stick capillary whole blood. Methods We evaluated the performance of both protocols against a standard laboratory-based protocol, using matched venous and capillary blood samples collected from young adults (N=24). Samples were incubated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and hydrocortisone, and the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and TNFα was measured in response. Results Comparisons indicate a high level of agreement in responses across the protocols and culture conditions. The overall correlation in results was 0.88 between the standard and small volume protocols, and 0.86 between the standard and capillary blood protocols. Repeatability for the small volume and capillary blood protocols was high, with mean coefficient of variation across five replicates of 6.2 and 5.4%, respectively.ConclusionsThese results demonstrate the feasibility of culturing cells and quantifying the inflammatory response to challenge outside the lab, with a wide range of potential applications in biobehavioral research in community-based and remote field settings.