Molecular methods for diagnosing interstitial lung diseases

摘要

A polynucleotide library (I) useful in the molecular characterization of an interstitial lung disease (ILD), comprising a pool of polynucleotide sequences or their subsequences that are either underexpressed or overexpressed in ILD cells, is new. Independent claims are also included for: (1) diagnosing (M1) the presence of or predisposition for ILD using expression profiling images, involves: (a) isolating material from an individual clinically diagnosed for ILD, or of familiar predisposition for an ILD; (b) providing molecular probes as ligands chosen from mRNA, polynucleotides, oligonucleotides, cDNAs, proteins or their functional fragments, isolated or generated from the individuals; (c) contacting the molecular probes as ligands with a set of immobilized receptors chosen from polynucleotides, oligonucleotides or cDNA probes and antibodies or their functional fragments, specifically representing a respective set of genes involved with the presence of or predisposition for ILD to be molecularly diagnosed, and qualitatively and quantitatively detecting the presence of bound ligand/receptor complexes to obtain an expression profiling image, representative for the current status of the individual to be diagnosed; (d) comparing the expression profiling image obtained in step (c) with the expression profiling image(s) of normal individuals and/or expression profiling image(s) of individuals having predisposition for or suffering from ILD to be diagnosed; and (e) excluding or diagnosing suspected ILD or a predisposition for ILD on the basis of the results of the comparison obtained in step (d); and (2) detecting gene expression and/or genomic DNA of infective agents including bacteria, yeasts, fungi or viruses as cellular parasites in cells from patients with ILD.