Bio-Rad Laboratories has introduced the Bio-Plex ProO magnetic bead-based human and mouse cytokine assays, which increase speed and improve reproducibility in cytokine research.
The magnetic bead-based immunoassays developed by Bio-Rad scientists offer full automation previously unavailable with suspension bead arrays.
Cytokines play an important role in a range of physiological processes, including immune response, inflammation and the development of blood cells (hematopoiesis).
Their utility as biomarkers of a spectrum of disease states, including cancer, makes measuring cytokine levels crucial to diagnostics and therapeutics.
Bio-Plex Pro magnetic bead-based human and mouse cytokine assays are multiplex assays that can quickly and accurately detect multiple biomarkers in a single experiment, using as little as 12.5 microlitres of serum, plasma or other body fluids.
Magnetic bead-based assays overcome the limitations that inhibit automation of conventional polystyrene bead assays that require manual wash methods involving as many as 14 separate steps.
Magnetic bead-based assays use an automated magnetic bead washer, the Bio-Plex Pro Wash Station, to enable magnetic separation during wash steps and to give results within three to four minutes.
For all 32 mouse cytokine assays and all 50 human cytokine assays, transfer to the magnetic bead-based format showed comparable or improved performance compared with polystyrene bead-based Bio-Plex cytokine assays.
By eliminating user-to-user variability, the automated wash station increases assay reproducibility.
Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals, a maker of anti-inflammatory drugs, measured cytokine levels in asthmatic response, comparing Bio-Rad's magnetic bead-based assays and polystyrene bead-based Bio-Plex assays.
Resolvyx found that the magnetic assay format performed as well as the polystyrene format, with nearly identical results.
Bio-Plex Pro human cytokine assay panels contain assays for 50 well-characterised human and 32 well-characterised mouse cytokines, chemokines and growth factors.
The assays have been configured into kits that contain all necessary reagents and diluents for preparing and running the assay.
Customers can: choose from pre-mixed kits, have select-targets custom blended, or can order select targets to be mixed by themselves.
Antibodies and buffer compositions are the same as the nonmagnetic assays that have been available from Bio-Rad in the past.
