Assay Automation Ability - Lyophilized reagents for in vitro whole blood assays
Tags: Assay Automation, Assay Standardization, Biomarker, Biotech, Cell Mediated Immune Assays, Drug Development, Immune Monitoring, Pharma, Surrogate Markers of Efficacy, Vaccine DevelopmentThe need to implement robust biomarkers in clinical trials has never been greater, and such efforts can be easily compromised by reagent instability or simple human error during assay set-up. Many biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are introducing efforts to conduct biomarker studies under more rigorous settings, and the use of plates or tubes pre-loaded with stimulation or staining reagents could be of value for studies that involve flow cytometry.
The value of this approach is that it lends itself to assay automation easily and safeguards against omission or erroneous addition of bulk liquid formulations of PMA and ionomycin to the reaction vessel (i.e., plate or tube) and also lends itself to extended stability/shelf-life of these reagents. On the basis of this initial success, we plan to expand our evaluation of lyophilized reagents so that they can be incorporated into our clinical biomarker campaigns as appropriate.
