A Multiplex Bead Serology Panel For Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Using Dried Blood Spots

Vaccines are effective tools to improve public health. The effectiveness of vaccines is, however, dependent on the overall level of protection in a population. Antibodies to vaccine-related antigens are good biomarkers of protection and serosurveillance can help target vaccination programs. An integrated approach to perform serosurveillance on multiple vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) has been advocated and would be facilitated by a standardized multiplex immunoassay. In this report, we describe the evaluation of the performance of a multi-lyte bead-based serology panel for 12 VPDs which uses a dried blood spot sample from a finger prick (ImmunoProfile Antibody Test System).

Verification/validation studies were performed at a CLIA-certified clinical laboratory (BioAgilytix Labs, Boston, MA) on blood collected from dried blood spot (DBS) card samples from adults and children. In addition, proof-of-principle pilot serosurveillance studies were performed to demonstrate the potential of this test to identify protection gaps in adult and pediatric populations.

This study demonstrates that the ImmunoProfile Antibody Test System has the requisite analytical performance to be a reliable tool for determining levels of protection to VPDs. The pilot serosurveillance studies demonstrate that this test reveals gaps in protection comparable to what has been shown using immunoassays for individual antibodies using serum samples.

Serological survey data obtained with the validated ImmunoProfile Antibody Test System could provide a wealth of information on levels of protection and could unearth vaccination gaps that may not have been anticipated.