Intestinal biopsy sampling during IBD trials represents a valuable adjunct strategy for understanding drug responses at the tissue level. Given the length and distinctive embryonic origins of the proximal and distal colon, we investigated whether inherent regional differences of immune cell composition could introduce confounders when sampling different disease stages, or pre/post drug administration. Here, we capitalise on novel mass cytometry technology to perform deep immunophenotyping of distinct healthy colonic segments, using the limited numbers of biopsies that can be harvested from patients.

中文翻译：

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结肠段内的固有免疫细胞变异对临床试验设计提出了挑战。

IBD 试验期间的肠道活检取样代表了一种有价值的辅助策略，可用于了解组织水平的药物反应。鉴于近端和远端结肠的长度和独特的胚胎起源，我们研究了免疫细胞组成的固有区域差异是否会在对不同疾病阶段或给药前/给药后进行采样时引入混杂因素。在这里，我们利用新的质谱流式细胞术技术对不同的健康结肠段进行深度免疫表型分析，使用可以从患者身上采集的有限数量的活检。