Abstract
Luciferases are widely used to monitor biological processes. Here we describe the naturally secreted Gaussia princeps luciferase (Gluc) as a highly sensitive reporter for quantitative assessment of cells in vivo by measuring its concentration in blood. The Gluc blood assay complements in vivo bioluminescence imaging, which has the ability to localize the signal and provides a multifaceted assessment of cell viability, proliferation and location in experimental disease and therapy models.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute P50 CA86355-04 (R.W. and X.O.B.), 1K99CA126839-01 (B.A.T.) and the Brain Tumor Society (X.O.B. and B.A.T.). We thank M. Sena-Esteves for help with vector generation and useful discussions, M. Whalen, F. Swirski and M. Pittet for advice as well as C. Maguire and N. Lewandrowski for technical help.
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B.A.T., T.W., R.W. and X.O.B. designed the experiments. T.W., B.A.T., C.B. and L.P. performed the experiments. R.d.K. helped with the blood withdrawn and intravenous injections. B.A.T. supervised the project.
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An invention disclosure submitted by B.A.T., including subject matter of this manuscript was filed with the Massachusetts General Hospital office of technology transfer. This invention disclosure is under evaluation at the office and may be filed as a patent application.
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Wurdinger, T., Badr, C., Pike, L. et al. A secreted luciferase for ex vivo monitoring of in vivo processes. Nat Methods 5, 171–173 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1177
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1177
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