An ultrasensitive method for the determination of proteins is described that combines an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and a thionicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (thio-NAD) cycling method. A sandwich method using a primary and a secondary antibody for antigens is employed in an ELISA. An androsterone derivative, 3α-hydroxysteroid, is produced by the hydrolysis of 3α-hydroxysteroid 3-phosphate with alkaline phosphatase linked to the secondary antibody. This 3α-hydroxysteroid is oxidized to a 3-ketosteroid by 3α- hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (3α-HSD) with a cofactor thio-NAD. By the opposite reaction, the 3-ketosteroid is reduced to a 3α-hydroxysteroid by 3α-HSD with a cofactor NADH. During this cycling reaction, thio-NADH accumulates in a quadratic function-like fashion. Accumulated thio-NADH can be measured directly at an absorbance of 400 nm without any interference from other cofactors. These features enable us to detect a target protein with ultrasensitivity (10−19 mol/assay) by measuring the cumulative quantity of thio-NADH. Our ultrasensitive determination of proteins thus allows for the detection of small amounts of proteins only by the application of thio-NAD cycling reagents to the usual ELISA system.
ObjectiveThe chronic kidney disease (CKD) is widely diagnosed on the basis of albuminuria and the glomerular filtration rate. A more precise diagnosis of CKD, however, requires the assessment of other factors. Urinary adiponectin recently attracted attention for CKD assessment, but evaluation is difficult due to the very low concentration of urinary adiponectin in normal subjects.Research design and methodsWe developed an ultrasensitive ELISA coupled with thionicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide cycling to detect trace amounts of proteins, which allows us to measure urinary adiponectin at the subattomole level. We measured urinary adiponectin levels in 59 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) and 24 subjects without DM (normal) to test our hypothesis that urinary adiponectin levels increase with progression of CKD due to DM.ResultsThe urinary adiponectin levels were 14.88±3.16 (ng/mg creatinine, mean±SEM) for patients with DM, and 3.06±0.33 (ng/mg creatinine) for normal subjects. The threshold between them was 4.0 ng/mg creatinine. The urinary adiponectin levels increased with an increase in the CKD risk. Furthermore, urinary adiponectin mainly formed a medium-molecular weight multimer (a hexamer) in patients with DM, whereas it formed only a low-molecular weight multimer (a trimer) in normal subjects. That is, the increase in urinary adiponectin in patients with DM led to the emergence of a medium-molecular weight form in urine.ConclusionsOur new assay showed that urinary adiponectin could be a new diagnostic index for CKD. This assay is a non-invasive test using only urine, thus reducing the patient burden.
To reduce the window period between HIV-1 infection and the ability to diagnose it, a fourth-generation immunoassay including the detection of HIV-1 p24 antigen has been developed. However, because the commercially available systems for this assay use special, high-cost instruments to measure, for example, chemiluminescence, it is performed only by diagnostics companies and hub hospitals. To overcome this limitation, we applied an ultrasensitive ELISA coupled with a thio-NAD cycling, which is based on a usual enzyme immunoassay without special instruments, to detect HIV-1 p24. The p24 detection limit by our ultrasensitive ELISA was 0.0065 IU/assay (i.e., ca. 10-18 moles/assay). Because HIV-1 p24 antigen is thought to be present in the virion in much greater numbers than viral RNA copies, the value of 10-18 moles of the p24/assay corresponds to ca. 103 copies of the HIV-1 RNA/assay. That is, our ultrasensitive ELISA is chasing the detection limit (102 copies/assay) obtained by PCR-based nucleic acid testing (NAT) with a margin of only one different order. Further, the detection limit by our ultrasensitive ELISA is less than that mandated for a CE-marked HIV antigen/antibody assay. An additional recovery test using blood supported the reliability of our ultrasensitive ELISA.
Adiponectin is a hormone secreted from adipocytes, and it demonstrates antidiabetic, anti-atherosclerotic, antiobesity and anti-inflammatory effects. However, the patterns of change in urinary adiponectin levels in various diseases remain unknown, because only trace amounts of the hormone are present in urine. In the present study, we applied an ultrasensitive ELISA coupled with thio-NAD cycling to measure urinary adiponectin levels. Spikeand-recovery tests using urine confirmed the reliability of our ultrasensitive ELISA. The limit of detection for adiponectin in urine was 2.3×10−19 moles/assay (1.4 pg/mL). The urinary adiponectin concentration ranged between 0.04 and 5.82 ng/mL in healthy subjects. The pilot study showed that the urinary adiponectin levels, which were corrected by the creatinine concentration, were 0.73±0.50 (ng/mg creatinine, N=6) for healthy subjects, versus 12.02±3.85 (ng/mg creatinine, N=3) for patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). That is, the urinary adiponectin levels were higher (P<0.05) in DM patients than in healthy subjects. Further, these urinary adiponectin levels tended to increase with the progression of DM accompanied with nephropathy. Our method is thus expected to provide a simple, rapid and reasonably priced test for noninvasive monitoring of the progression of DM without the requirement of special tools.
BackgroundBecause H2O2 is generated by various oxidase-catalyzed reactions, a highly sensitive determination method of H2O2 is applicable to measurements of low levels of various oxidases and their substrates such as glucose, lactate, glutamate, urate, xanthine, choline, cholesterol and NADPH. We propose herein a new, highly sensitive method for the measurement of H2O2 and glucose using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS).Methodology/Principal FindingsFCS has the advantage of allowing us to determine the number of fluorescent molecules. FCS measures the fluctuations in fluorescence intensity caused by fluorescent probe movement in a small light cavity with a defined volume generated by confocal illumination. We thus developed a highly sensitive determination system of H2O2 by FCS, where horseradish peroxidase (HRP) catalyzes the formation of a covalent bond between fluorescent molecules and proteins in the presence of H2O2. Our developed system gave a linear calibration curve for H2O2 in the range of 28 to 300 nM with the detection limit of 8 nM. In addition, by coupling with glucose oxidase (GOD)-catalyzed reaction, the method allows to measure glucose in the range of 80 nM to 1.5 µM with detection limit of 24 nM. The method was applicable to the assay of glucose in blood plasma. The mean concentration of glucose in normal human blood plasma was determined to be 4.9 mM.Conclusions/SignificanceIn comparison with commercial available methods, the detection limit and the minimum value of determination for glucose are at least 2 orders of magnitude more sensitive in our system. Such a highly sensitive method leads the fact that only a very small amount of plasma (20 nL) is needed for the determination of glucose concentration in blood plasma.
To minimize patient suffering, the smallest possible volume of blood should be collected for diagnosis and disease monitoring. When estimating insulin secretion capacity and resistance to insulin in diabetes mellitus (DM), increasing insulin assay immunosensitivity would reduce the blood sample volume required for testing. Here we present an ultrasensitive ELISA coupled with thio-NAD cycling to measure immunoreactive insulin in blood serum. Only 5 μL of serum was required for testing, with a limit of detection (LOD) for the assay of 10(-16) moles/assay. Additional recovery tests confirmed this method can detect insulin in sera. Comparisons between a commercially available immunoreactive insulin kit and our ultrasensitive ELISA using the same commercially available reference demonstrated good data correlation, providing further evidence of assay accuracy. Together, these results demonstrate our ultrasensitive ELISA could be a powerful tool in the diagnosis and treatment of not only DM but also many other diseases in the future.
Each cell produces its own responses even if it appears identical to other cells. To analyze these individual cell characteristics, we need to measure trace amounts of molecules in a single cell. Nucleic acids in a single cell can be easily amplified by polymerase chain reaction, but single-cell measurement of proteins and sugars will require de novo techniques. In the present study, we outline the techniques we have developed toward this end. For proteins, our ultrasensitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) coupled with thionicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide cycling can detect proteins at subattomoles per assay. For sugars, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy coupled with glucose oxidase-catalyzed reaction allows us to measure glucose at tens of nM. Our methods thus offer versatile techniques for single-cell-level analyses, and they are hoped to strongly promote single-cell biology as well as to develop noninvasive tests in clinical medicine.
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