Analytical validation of a highly sensitive microparticle-based immunoassay for the quantitation of IL-13 in human serum using the Erenna® immunoassay system

IL-13 is a Th2 cytokine that has been shown to be an important mediator of airway inflammation contributing to asthma lesions. Given its proposed role in asthma, measurements of this cytokine in serum may provide insights into disease mechanisms, progression and pharmacodynamic effects of IL-13 targeted therapeutics. However, current commercially available ELISA immunoassays are frequently unable to detect baseline concentrations of IL-13 in serum from healthy individuals, which are below the limit of detection. Here we describe the use of the novel microparticle-based Erenna® IL-13 human immunoassay (Singulex, Inc.), which utilizes proprietary antibodies and single molecule counting technology, to quantify IL-13 from 100 µL of serum from apparently healthy subjects and clinically defined symptomatic and asymptomatic asthma subjects. The lower limit of quantification of the Erenna assay was validated at 0.07 pg/mL and the assay detected baseline concentrations of IL-13 in 98% of serum samples tested. The calibration curve showed good precision over the entire linear range of 0.07–50 pg/mL, with inter-assay imprecision < 10% CV except at the lowest concentration tested (< 15%). The intra- and inter-assay imprecision of spiked serum samples containing three different IL-13 concentrations (2, 8, and 25 pg/mL) ranged from 2.2–2.4% and 6.1–6.8%, respectively. Using the Erenna IL-13 assay, we observe that serum IL-13 concentrations range from < 0.07–1.02 pg/mL in apparently healthy subjects (N = 60) with similar ranges in asymptomatic (0.07–0.66 pg/mL, N = 26) and symptomatic (< 0.07–1.26 pg/mL, N = 96) asthma subjects. The Erenna immunoassay improved sensitivity by over two full logs compared to previous ELISA methods, while using smaller sample volumes. In addition, the Erenna assay reliably measured IL-13 in endogenous and spiked human serum samples that were not quantifiable using other methods. Taken together, these results show that this novel assay offers a significant improvement over previous methods for high-sensitive quantitative measurement of IL-13 in human serum samples obtained from both apparently healthy and asthmatic subjects, and can be used in future clinical studies to accurately measure concentrations of this cytokine prior to and following drug therapy in human serum.