Microspot immunoassay-based analysis of plasma protein profiles for biomarker discovery strategies.

To expedite the development of personalized medicine, new and reliable biomarkers are required to facilitate early diagnosis, to determine prognosis, predict response or resistance to different therapies, and to monitor disease progression or recurrence. Human body fluids, such as blood, present a promising resource for biomarker discovery, in every sense. Microspot immunoassays allow the simultaneous quantification of multiple analytes from a minute amount of samples in a single measurement. The experimental design of microspot immunoassays is based on antibody pairs recognizing different epitopes of the analyte. The first antibody is used to capture the analyte from the complex sample, and the second antibody is used for detection. As with traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, highly reliable and reproducible results are obtained.