Guava Technologies has announced it is in the final stages of developing a series of bead-based multiplex detection kits for cytokines and chemokines.
The development is intended to meet the needs of drug discovery researchers focusing on immunology, inflammation and oncology.
The kits, which will be available in the next several months, will improve laboratory productivity and efficiency, saving researchers time and money.
Researchers currently tend to use Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISAs) to analyse secreted proteins such as cytokines and chemokines.
ELISAs though, are solid-phase assays and can only measure levels of one protein at a time.
The new bead-based assays from Guava Technologies will be solution-based, enabling simultaneous quantitative measurement of up to 20 different proteins.
The bead-based multiplexed assays will give pharma and biotech researchers a direct comparative measurement of multiple protein-expression patterns without the need for extrapolation among results from independent assays.
This new capability will allow researchers to obtain an overall picture of the way a particular stimulus, such as a new drug candidate, affects multiple proteins simultaneously.
This means a more accurate prediction of the overall physiological effects of the stimulus, such as the response to a drug candidate, is achievable.
The new multiplexed assays will also help researchers identify differences in proteins or protein levels between healthy and disease states, providing insight into disease cause and progression.
Based on fluorescence technology, the bead-based kits from Guava offer higher sensitivity and a greater linear range of detection than assays that employ enzymatic (for example ELISAs) or colorimetric (for example Western Blots) readouts.
The first bead-based kits to hit the market will target cytokines and chemokines.
They will be sold as individual kits, each targeting a specific protein, but will be interchangeable so researchers can combine kits in a mix-and-match fashion to analyse up to 20 proteins simultaneously in a single multiplexed assay.
In addition, Guava Technologies will offer several pre-packaged multiplex kits targeting groups of proteins commonly studied by researchers working in inflammation, immunology, and oncology.
The kits will be compatible with Guava Flow Cytometers such as the Guava Easycyte Plus System and will run Guava Simplicity Software, which, like the detection kits, is in the final development stage and will be available within several months.
The new detection kits will be for research use only, not for use in diagnostic procedures.
