Opportunities for bead-based multiplex assays in veterinary diagnostic laboratories

Abstract

Abstract. Bead-based multiplex assays (BBMAs) are applicable for high throughput, simultaneous detection of multiple analytes in solution (from several to 50-500 analytes within a single, small sample volume). Currently, few assays are commercially available for veterinary applications, but they are available to identify and measure various cytokines, growth factors and their receptors, inflammatory proteins, kinases and inhibitors, neurobiology proteins, and pathogens and antibodies in human beings, nonhuman primates, and rodent species. In veterinary medicine, various nucleic acid and protein-coupled beads can be used in, or for the development of, antigen and antibody BBMAs, with the advantage that more data can be collected using approximately the same amount of labor as used for other antigen and antibody assays. Veterinary-related BBMAs could be used for detection of pathogens, genotyping, measurement of hormone levels, and in disease surveillance and vaccine assessment. It will be important to evaluate whether BBMAs are "fit for purpose," how costs and efficiencies compare between assays, which assays are published or commercially available for specific veterinary applications, and what procedures are involved in the development of the assays. It is expected that many veterinary-related BBMAs will be published and/or become commercially available in the next few years. The current review summarizes the BBMA technology and some of the currently available BBMAs developed for veterinary settings. Some of the human diagnostic BBMAs are also described, providing an example of possible templates for future development of new veterinary-related BBMAs.

Polystyrene Core–Silica Shell Particles with Defined Nanoarchitectures as a Versatile Platform for Suspension Array Technology

“…1,2,3 Due to the requirement of only small amounts of sample, fast reaction kinetics, facile array preparation and the recent availability of user-friendly, robust and reasonably priced flow cytometers for high throughput single-particle read-out, bead-based SAT is becoming a more and more attractive alternative to classical flat arrays or ELISA techniques for analyzing low to medium numbers of targets in a multiplexed manner. 4,5,6,7 Bare polystyrene (PS) or silica (SiO 2 ) microparticles are used as the spherical platform of choice, because both materials are cheap and can be synthesized in high yields in the nano-to micrometer range, for instance, using the classical Stöber method or dispersion polymerization.…”

Pathogen-Reactive T Helper Cell Analysis in the Pig

“…However, especially in the field of T cell biology, there has been remarkable progress in developing pig-specific and cross-reactive antibodies for multicolor flow cytometry (8, 10–14), in diagnostic bead-based multiplex assays (15) as well as in annotating the porcine immune system (16). These efforts helped to expand the opportunities for studying adaptive immunity in this human-relevant large animal model.…”

Development and performance assessment of a luminex xMAP® direct hybridization assay for the detection and identification of indoor air fungal contamination

“…However, even if the efficiency of most of these qPCR methods has been well established, their multiplex capacities are still too limited. With its ability to simultaneously analyze up to 50 different targets, the use of the Luminex xMAP ® technology on a MagPix instrument could significantly upgrade the indoor fungal contamination monitoring as was previously demonstrated for the diagnosis of some relevant fungal and other pathogens from clinical samples [20, 21, 26, 32–34]. …”