Recruited primarily from the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries, the IBA scientific staff understands the challenges of immunoassay development and validation.

Scientific Expertise

• Immunoassay optimization
• Custom MAb, PAb production, and characterization
• Protein purification and characterization
• Performance qualification
• Clinical utility assessment

Singleplexed Immunoassay Platforms

• BioPlex™ Suspension Array System (BioRad Laboratories, Hercules, CA)
• Luminex100® xMAP® Multiple Analyte Profiling System (Luminex Corp., Austin, TX)
• Perkin Elmer^® Envision^™
• Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA)
• Radioimmunoassay (RIA)

Multiplex Technology

The Luminex100®, Bio-Plex™, and MDS® Sector™ Imager instruments utilize multiple analyte technology to measure several analytes in a single clinical specimen simultaneously. These technologies are referred to as Multiple Analyte Profiling (xMAP) for Luminex100®, Bio-Plex™, and MDS® Sector™

The Technologies:

Luminex100® and Bio-Plex™

• In the xMAP™ technology, receptor-ligand interactions take place on the surface of color-coded microspheres. Sets of color-coded microspheres, each coated with a different “capture” molecule, are mixed with sample and fluorescently labeled “reporter” molecules specific for each analyte to be quantitated.
• The Luminex100® and Bio-Plex™ instruments use microfluidics to align the microspheres in a single file where lasers illuminate the fluorophores in the microspheres (to identify the analyte being measured) and the fluorophores on the reporter molecules (to quantitate the analyte).

MDS® Sector™ Multi-Spot™ Antibody Array

• The Meso-Scale Discovery (MSD®) technology uses Multi-Spot® antibody arrays coupled to electrodes at the bottom of the well. These antibodies can be spotted by IBA for both single and multiplex approaches using our method development expertise.
• With the antibody arrays in place and mapped out, the assay proceeds very much like a conventional sandwich ELISA with the use of both capture and detection antibody. Unique to this method, however, is the electrochemiluminescent (ECL) label coupled to the capture antibody. This ECL label is activated through conductance of an electrical charge through the plate. Each spot corresponds to a specific biomarker and is read individually without noise from adjacent spots.

Multiple Analyte Detection Benefit Summary

Multiple analyte detection offers numerous advantages over conventional immunoassay methods which quantitate a single analyte. These advantages include:

• Sensitivity. The increased surface area provided by use of the microspheric beads as a solid phase capture reagent maximizes assay sensitivity. We routinely achieve assay sensitivities 2 to 3 logs greater than conventional microtiter plate based RIAs or ELISAs.
• Speed. Rapid binding kinetics reduces incubation times and overall assay performance times from four to six hours to one to two hours.
• Conservation of Rare Specimens. The high sensitivity of multiplexed methods reduces sample volume requirements. This is of particular importance in situations where sample volume is limiting. Work in our laboratory has demonstrated the ability to profile the human humoral responses to a multiplexed panel of bacterial antigens using less than 2 µL of adult or pediatric patient sera.
• Cost-effectiveness. The multiple analyte format significantly reduces the costs associated with labor, reagents, and consumables.
• Efficiency. High sample analysis throughput reduces sample analysis time.

Other Utilities of Luminex100®, Bio-Plex™, and MDS® multi-analyte technologies.

• Antibody isotype and titer
• HIV and hepatitis B seroconversion
• Cytokine measurements
• Drugs of abuse quantitation
• Allergy/autoimmunity profiling
• hCG and AFP concentrations
• TORCH panel
• Cell surface receptor detection
• Transcriptional profiling
• Single nucleotide polymorphism profiling
• DNA-based tissue typing
• Enzyme kinetics
• Enzyme activity

To contact an IBA representative call (203) 315-5972 or e-mail: info@iba-analytics.com