Researchers Develop CIPHER-seq for Enhanced Immune Cell Profiling
Researchers have developed CIPHER-seq, a new single-cell platform that tracks both RNA and protein in immune signaling, providing a more complete snapshot of immune activity than RNA-only approaches. This method, developed by researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, captures multiple molecular layers simultaneously within single immune cells, bridging the gap between genetic intent and functional output. The technology was benchmarked using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from a healthy donor, focusing on RNA integrity, mitochondrial transcript enrichment, and RNA-protein coordination. The study highlights the improved correlation coefficients achieved with CIPHER-seq compared to external datasets, despite the inherent RNA-protein discordance due to biological phenomena such as post-transcriptional regulation and protein stability. 
