Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc, a multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research and clinical diagnostic products, has launched Bio-Plex Pro magnetic bead-based human and mouse cytokine assays that increase speed and improve reproducibility in cytokine research.
The magnetic bead-based immunoassays offer full automation previously unavailable with suspension bead arrays.
Cytokines play an important role in a wide range of physiological processes, including immune response, inflammation, and the development of blood cells (hematopoiesis). Their use 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 offer fast and accurate performance for the detection of multiple biomarkers in a single experiment, using as little as 12.5 ml 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 enable magnetic separation during wash steps by using a fully-automated magnetic bead washer, the Bio-Plex Pro Wash Station, for results within three to four minutes.
For all 32 mouse cytokine assays, as well as for 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. The drug company 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.