Establishment of a Flexible Platform for an Automated Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor—ELISA
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is a standard immunoassay to estimate protein concentrations in a variety of samples. An automated ELISA procedure was established that allows the measurement of the concentration of numerous proteins in a small sample volume. The automated ELISA procedure was tested by measuring the concentration of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in serum samples from humans. It was shown that the reproducibility of protein concentrations in three assay plates within one automated run was greater than 92%, within independent automated experiments greater than 96%. Automated processing with a maximum capacity of six plates and 240 serum samples per run showed an average interassay precision of 91 %. Serial dilutions of randomly chosen sera displayed significant linearity of recovered concentration. In conclusion it can be stated that the automated assay provides high flexibility with highly reproducible results and has several advantages compared to the manual method, including less operator dependence and faster sample throughput. The investigated ELISA test system seems to exhibit analytical characteristics indicating further clinical application. (JALA 2007;12:219–29)