Bio-Rad has launched magnetic bead-based multiplex immunoassays for TGF-B, rat cytokines, rat diabetes, and mouse TH17 cytokines.
Assays are built on Luminex's Magplex platform to take advantage of the magnetic beads workflow that simplifies assay preparation and reduces variability in results.
Magnetic bead-based assays are compatible with both vacuum and magnetic wash stations as well as other Luminex xMAP platforms such as Bio-Rad's Bio-Plex 200 and Bio-Plex 3D systems.
The Bio-Plex Pro rat cytokine assays and Bio-Plex Pro rat diabetes assays detect 25 rat cytokines and five rat diabetes biomarkers respectively.
Both panels are designed to help researchers investigate mechanisms and quantify biomarkers of diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and of those associated with neurological disorders and inflammation.
The Bio-Plex Pro TGF-B assays detect three isoforms of the transforming growth factor beta: TGF-B1, TGF-B2 and TGF-B3.
These assays are said to be key to understanding the mechanism of TGF-B signalling, which plays a key role in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and fibrosis.
The Bio-Plex Pro mouse Th17 assays comprise 11 new targets and can be coupled with Bio-Rad's six existing Th17 assays.
The Th17 cytokines are involved in various disease states, especially autoimmune diseases, and are also implicated in response to inflammatory conditions such as smoking, viral infections, and traumatic injuries.
Bio-Plex Pro assays are said to offer advantages over other xMAP and ELISA offerings, including: better performance - broader working assay range for increased confidence in sample detection, higher precision, and higher sensitivity (0.2 pg/ml for some assays); faster assay run time - shorter (one hour) incubation times yield results in three hours compared with other assays, which require an overnight incubation; flexible ordering options - choice of premixed panels, individual (singleplex) bead sets or custom user-created panels through the Bio-Plex Assay Builder.
Bio-Plex Pro assays are compatible with the Luminex 200, Flexmap 3D, and Magpix instruments as well as Luminex Xponent software.
