( Maria C Jenmalm 1 Mic...)Bio-Plex Cytokine Immunoassays and ELISA: Comparison of Two Methodologies in Testing Samples From Asthmatic and Healthy Children, Rev A

Maria C Jenmalm,¹ Michele Malit,² Jim Torrence,² and Aiguo Zhang,^2
1 Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Division of Paediatrics, Linkping University, Sweden, and ² Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., 2000 Alfred Nobel Drive, Hercules, CA 94547 USA

Introduction
Cytokines play a significant role in hematopoiesis, inflammation, and wound healing. These important immunoregulators mediate interactions between various cells, and their dysregulated production may contribute to disease pathogenesis. Elevated levels of cytokines may indicate inflammation or disease progression. Although cytokine functions are complex, cytokine profiles are highly relevant parameters of an immune response. Different cytokines possess biologically overlapping functions, and they have the ability to regulate production of other cytokines. Therefore, analysis of the function of the complete set of cytokines expressed within microenvironments (e.g., a site of inflammation) is often of more value than analysis of a single isolated cytokine (OGarra and Murphy 1994).

A number of methodologies can be used to measure cytokines. The most common one is the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which allows measurement of different cytokines with high sensitivity and specificity. This technology, however, is restricted to analyzing one cytokine target at a time, which limits its usefulness when simultaneous measurement of multiple cytokine targets is desired. The new suspension bead array technology employed in the Bio-Plex system (Luminex xMAP technology) allows multiple cytokine targets to be measured from a single sample in a micr
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