ELISA and ELISPOT Assay Services

We offer ELISA assays in various formats: direct or indirect, standard sandwich or competitive ELISA, as well as ELISpot and In-cell ELISA.

The ELISpot assay is more sensitive than ELISA or intracellular cytokine staining. The high sensitivity is due to plate-bound antibodies that directly capture the secreted proteins released by the cell before they dilute in the cell culture medium, interact with cell-surface receptors on cells or are degraded by proteases. This characteristic allows the detection of very low frequencies of cytokine secreting cells and the feasibility of high throughput screening.

Detection of spots is achieved using a substrate with a precipitating product, the end result being visible spots on the membrane surface with each spot corresponding to the footprint of an individual protein-secreting cell. This is a highly effective and sensitive method that has the advantage of long shelf life (spots do not fade over time and ELISpot plates can be reanalyzed several years later after being stored at room temperature).

ELISpot is very useful for determining cell-mediated immunity due to its high sensitivity and specificity in detecting rare antigen-specific cells. This provides quantitative information regarding specific cytokine or other secreted immune molecules.