Multiplex Assays and Homebrew Kits for Biomarker Discovery and Validation
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Quanterix Corporation has announced the commercial availability of its multiplex panels, providing users with the ability to develop their own multiplex assays using the company’s ultra-sensitive Simoa technology. This allows users to achieve similar sensitivity with each marker in a multiplex panel as they would if they were to test individual assays. Quanterix has also developed a convenient multiplex homebrew kit, allowing customers to use their own antibody pairs to develop custom multiplex Simoa panels, providing unlimited flexibility and significant cost savings.
Today, researchers and clinicians want the ability to test for several different biomarkers on a small sample, making it possible to consider alternative, less invasive samples than the traditional blood test. Quanterix’ menu of Simoa assay kits has been growing rapidly and has now reached 30 assays, including markers for oncology, cardiology, neurology, infectious disease and inflammatory disease, all of which allow researchers to measure the associated biomarkers at levels that were impossible to measure until now.
“The introduction of Simoa multiplexing is an enormous step towards the paradigm shift from today’s sick care to true healthcare,” said Kevin Hrusovsky, CEO and Executive Chairman at Quanterix. “It will save Simoa customers time and money while minimizing the sample volume that’s required to measure multiple analytes in a single test. It’s remarkable that we are able to run these multiplex panels without sacrificing the exquisite sensitivity, precision or dynamic range that Simoa assays are revolutionizing thanks to digital measurement of individual molecules in discrete microwells.”
The first commercially available multiplex kits are 3-plex panels of cytokines, which are very useful for measuring inflammatory response across a wide range of conditions. These new panels are composed of individual cytokines that have been most popular with Simoa customers over the past year in singleplex format, thanks to their exquisitely low limits of detection. The normal healthy range for many cytokines is close to the limit of detection of conventional immunoassay measurement techniques.
Because of this, the sensitivity provided by Simoa allows researchers to measure both healthy and sick subjects with confidence, leading to a significant increase in demand for Simoa cytokine assays over the past year.
