Immunoassays:
Excellent Specificity and High Sensitivity Are Key
Before a disease can be cured, it has to be properly identified. For several decades, immunoassays have played a vital role in hospitals and research laboratories to improve the health of human beings.
Over the years, immunoassays have provided valuable information in diagnostics and thereby have shortened hospital stays and decreased the severity of diseases.
But medicine is not the only field where they have proved to be valuable. Various industries rely on immunoassays as well when they need to detect and monitor contamination in food and water. But how exactly does this work?
Immunoassays rely on biochemistry to identify the presence or concentration of an analyte. In human medicine, this analyte could be an antibody that a person’s immune system has produced in response to an infection. Should antibodies bind to the analyte, the sample is “positive”.
Depending on what is being tested, the samples used can come from various sources. The wide range includes serum, plasma, whole blood, urine, saliva or swabs of mucous membranes. As a non-invasive, painless and convenient way of obtaining samples, saliva diagnostics have gained increased importance in this regard.
Common forms of immunoassay are enzyme, radio, and luminescence immunoassays. Typical markers for the quality of immunoassays are specificity, sensitivity, reproducibility and ease of use. It is of great importance to achieve an optimal balance between specificity and sensitivity for a high diagnostic value. In order to maintain the high diagnostic value of quality immunoassays, the potential for errors during the testing process must also be kept at a minimum. As manual testing is susceptible to mistakes made by individual human beings andis moreover very time consuming, automation has become increasingly important.
On its evolution towards being a solution business, Tecan, the automation expert, has acquired the immunoassay specialist IBL International. IBL’s large portfolio of several hundred immunoassays includes endocrinology, neonatal screening, saliva diagnostics, autoimmunity, various infectious diseases, tumor markers and tests related to neuroscience, such as testing for the levels of amyloid-ß to aid early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Together, IBL International and Tecan offer fully automated systems adapted for immunoassays in specialty diagnostics.
Responsive Automation
- Innovative monitoring technologies and control mechanisms
- Reacting to ever-changing conditions and unpredictable requirements in the lab.