Single-Cell Method To Improve Immunotherapy
Single-Cell Method To Improve Immunotherapy
https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/rna-alone-doesnt-tell-the-full-immune-story-411467
Publish Date: 2026-04-09 04:51:00
Source Domain: www.technologynetworks.com
Our immune system is constantly making decisions. Immune cells sense danger, send signals, call for backup and sometimes attack. Scientists have long studied these decisions by reading RNA. But RNA doesn’t always tell the full story.
At Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, researchers have developed a way to see what immune cells are actually doing, not just what they intend to do. A new technology called CIPHER-seq lets scientists simultaneously measure both RNA and proteins within the same individual immune cell, offering a clearer picture of how immune responses work.
The study was led by a multidisciplinary team based at Sylvester and the Miller School, with collaborators from the University of California, San Francisco, and the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The work brings together expertise in cancer biology, hematology, immunology, genomics, flow cytometry and molecular biology and is detailed in Scientific Reports.
“RNA gives us clues about where a cell is headed,” said Justin Taylor, M.D., Sylvester researcher, co-senior author of the study and associate professor of hematology at the Miller School. “Proteins show us where it actually arrives, and this clearer picture could help scientists design better immunotherapies and help clinicians predict which patients are most likely to benefit from them.”
Why RNA Alone Can Be Misleading
Single‑cell RNA sequencing has transformed biomedical research. It allows scientists to study thousands of immune cells at once and see which genes are turned on or off. But RNA is only a set of instructions. Proteins are the molecules that carry out those instructions.
That gap becomes especially important when scientists study cytokines. These small but powerful proteins that immune cells use to communicate help control inflammation, direct immune attacks and shape how tumors grow or shrink. Yet RNA levels for cytokines…
