Crucial Discoveries & Advancements in Immunoassay Techniques

This essay provides an opinionated overview of the top two advancements in immunoassay techniques: the discovery of monoclonal antibody production and the invention of the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). It highlights the significance of monoclonal antibodies in overcoming the limitations of impure antibody mixtures, enabling precise protein tagging, interferon identification, and therapeutic applications in cancer treatment. The essay also emphasizes the importance of ELISA as a highly analytical and specific method for antigen quantification, particularly in disease identification such as HIV infection, noting its speed and accuracy compared to radioimmune assays. The author argues that these two advancements have vastly improved disease detection, protein function understanding, and overall reliability in immunological research and diagnostics.

Running head: ADVANCEMENT IN IMMUNOASSAY TECHNIQUE
ADVANCEMENT IN IMMUNOASSAY TECHNIQUE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1ADVANCEMENT IN IMMUNOASSAY TECHNIQUE
Since its inception, immunological tools are being used in great effect in the modern
medicine industry as immunoassay techniques. Today’s modern and efficient immunoassay
techniques did not appear suddenly and lots of innovation, technique and research are the pillars
behind this. Amongst them, some are very important and critical compared to other and to
choose top two innovations or advancement is no easy task. However, in my unassuming
opinion, I think top two advancements in the area of immunoassay would be the discovery the
means of producing ‘monoclonal antibodies’ and the invention of the technique ‘ELISA or
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay’ and in that order. Therefore, in this opinionated essay,
brief description about these two techniques will be provided in the following section.
The discovery of the way of producing monoclonal antibodies provided a major
breakthrough in the way of immunological techniques which intensified the advancements of
immunological approaches. Before the discovery of the technique of producing monoclonal
antibodies, researchers had to work with impure mixture of antibodies and interpretation of data
from that result was difficult and cumbersome. Presently, monoclonal antibody producing
immortal cell line is available commercially and researchers do not have to use impure mixture
of antibodies (Shepard et al., 2017). Additionally, monoclonal antibodies can be used as tags for
protein which guides development. Therefore, understanding protein mechanism is lot easier
now due to the discovery of the way of producing monoclonal antibodies. Recently, interferons
are being subject to lots of research and it is very vital for the research area of proteomics.
Monoclonal antibody can be used to identify this interferon from a crude mixture. The sensitivity
of this detection method is very high as it can purify interferon 5000 times from a crude mixture
(Shepard et al., 2017). Apart from that monoclonal antibodies have various effects on that area of
blood transfusion related disease like hepatitis and acquired immune deficiency syndrome or

2ADVANCEMENT IN IMMUNOASSAY TECHNIQUE
AIDS. Currently, monoclonal antibodies are used as therapeutic agents which can be used for the
treatment of cancer (Pietrantonio et al., 2017). Hence it can be seen that the monoclonal
antibodies have various application with regards to detection of diseases, understanding protein
function and purification. In a nutshell, theoretically, any desired specificity can be prepared with
monoclonal antibodies and thus it has advances the immunoassay techniques vastly and this is
why it my first choice advancements which made highest impact.
ELISA or Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is a highly analytical and specific
method for the quantification of antigen or protein. Therefore, this technique has huge
application in the area of disease identification and ELISA is the basis test for the HIV infection.
This technique has more benefits and preferable to other immune assay techniques like
radioimmune assay (RIA) methods. Additionally, this technique is also very accurate in term of
quantifying the amount of antigen or protein. ELISA or Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is
also very fast procedure (Suttisunhakul et al., 2016). Thus, this techniques has become go to test
for the identification of many infectious and harmful disease and ELISA technique has made this
process very reliable and dependable and this why it my second choice advancements which
made second highest impact in my opinion.

3ADVANCEMENT IN IMMUNOASSAY TECHNIQUE
References:
Pietrantonio, F., Vernieri, C., Siravegna, G., Mennitto, A., Berenato, R., Perrone, F., ... &
Picciani, B. (2017). Heterogeneity of acquired resistance to anti-EGFR monoclonal
antibodies in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Clinical cancer research, 23(10),
2414-2422.
Shepard, H. M., Phillips, G. L., Thanos, C. D., & Feldmann, M. (2017). Developments in therapy
with monoclonal antibodies and related proteins. Clinical medicine, 17(3), 220-232.
Suttisunhakul, V., Wuthiekanun, V., Brett, P. J., Khusmith, S., Day, N. P., Burtnick, M. N., ... &
Chantratita, N. (2016). Development of rapid enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for
detection of antibodies to Burkholderia pseudomallei. Journal of clinical
microbiology, 54(5), 1259-1268.