Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and SciLifeLab have developed a new method to analyse the condition of immune cells in the blood. The method has been tested on patients with atherosclerosis and can distinguish their immune cells from those of healthy individuals. The study is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The physical properties of immune cells, such as how the cell membrane is structured or how the mitochondria function, affect how the cells move, communicate, and respond to inflammation. These properties have previously been difficult to measure on a large scale.
Now, researchers have developed a method that measures multiple physical properties simultaneously in individual cells, across very large cell populations. The method is called spectral biophysical cytometry (SBC) and combines fluorescent nanosensors, which respond to the cells' physical environment, with advanced flow cytometry, where thousands of cells are analysed one by one using laser light in a few minutes.
The researchers used the method to analyse immune cells in blood from 38 patients with atherosclerosis and 26 healthy control individuals.
"We show that immune cells in atherosclerosis have altered physical properties that can be measured directly in blood samples, without first needing to analyse genes or proteins," says Erdinc Sezgin , researcher at SciLifeLab and the Department of Women's and Children's Health , Karolinska Institutet. "The method provides an integrated picture of the health status of the immune cells and can serve as a complement to more time-consuming and costly analyses."
May affect disease processes
The analyses revealed clear differences in, among other things, the organisation of cell membranes and mitochondrial function, particularly in different types of T cells. These changes could also be linked to alterations in the cells' lipid composition and which genes were active.
"This suggests that the physical properties of cells are indications of health and important in disease processes in atherosclerosis and possibly also in other diseases," says Erdinc Sezgin.
The study is a so-called proof-of-concept study, meaning an early step demonstrating that the principle works. The next step is to investigate the method in larger patient cohorts and in other diseases.
The research was funded by, among others, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, Wellcome Leap and Karolinska Institutet. The researchers report that there are no conflicts of interest.
Publication
"Spectral biophysical cytometry with nanosensors reveals remodeling of immune cells in atherosclerosis", Cenk O. Gurdap, Dunya Aydos, Luca A. Andronico, Gábor Tóth, Tugce Ceker, John Cowgill, Irem Muge Akbulut Koyuncu, Neslihan Basak, Jaromir Mikes, Andrey S. Klymchenko, Federico Pietrocola, Petter Brodin, Ingela Lanekoff, Verda Bitirim, Erdinc Sezgin, Nature Nanotechnology, online 6 augusti, 2026, doi: 10.1038/s41565-026-02236-8
