Improved heterogeneous fluorescence assays are provided which employ solid supports comprising controlled pore glass particles which are substantially transparent at both the wavelength used to excite the fluorescent probe used in the assay and at the emission wavelength of the probe. The assays achieve sensitivities comparable to those achieved with radioimmunoassays without the need to concentrate the particles prior to the fluorescent measurement as in prior art heterogeneous fluorescence assays employing other types of solid supports.
A carrier having at least one kinetics and fluorescence enhancing support and a dry substance selected from the group consisting of fluorogenic substrates, B methylumbelliferone, 7-amino-4-methyl coumarin, B-napthylamine, fluoroscein, and resorufin deposited on the support demonstrates substantial enhancement of hydrolysis kinetics and fluorescence over pure liquid systems. When the device has a plurality of supports and the supports have different fluorogenic substrates an enzyme rate-of-reaction profile representative of a microorganism in the suspension can be determined and used to identify the organism. The device can also be used to characterize enzymes expressed by other biological specimens.
Magnetic porous inorganic siliceous materials having a particle size of about 1 to about 200 microns useful as solid supports in various chromatography, immunoassays, synthesis and other separation and purification procedures is disclosed.
In the commonly used method to obtain antibodies to small molecules, a combination of a highly antigenic carrier, such as bovine serum albumin, and the small molecule is injected into a host animal. The recovered crude serum or plasma then contains, in addition to the desired small molecule antibodies, much larger amounts of carrier-induced antibodies. These unwanted antibodies are efficiently removed from the crude serum or plasma, by contacting the crude serum or plasma with the carrier material in an immobilized high surface area form. Rapid and efficient anticarrier antibody removal results, with minimal loss of both desired antibody, and desired antibody activity.
A method for carrying out an immunoassay for an analyte in which a sample suspected of containing an analyte and reagents useful for detecting the analyte of interest are combined in an aqueous medium, wherein one of the reagents includes a support and one includes a label, the improvement comprising employing as the reagents a first and second conjugate, each comprised of a specific binding pair (sbp) member bound to a small molecule wherein the small molecules of each conjugate are different.
A method for carrying out a binding assay is described wherein a member of a specific binding pair (sbp) and a sample are combined with a matrix of non-porous beads in a liquid medium under conditions such that the beads bind to the sbp member. The liquid medium is removed from the beads by aspiration using an aspiration tube having one or more orifices each of a diameter smaller than the minimum diameter of the smallest bead thereby allowing removal of the liquid medium while prohibiting aspiration of the beads.
