Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) is an ultrasensitive solution-phase method for detecting
antibodies
An antibody (Ab), also known as an immunoglobulin (Ig), is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique molecule of the ...
. Antibodies bind to and
agglutinate
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
synthetic
antigen–
DNA conjugates, enabling ligation of the DNA strands and subsequent quantification by
qPCR. Like other Immuno-PCR (IPCR) detection methods ADAP combines the specificity of antibody-antigen recognition and the sensitivity of PCR. ADAP detects zepto- to attomoles of antibodies in 2 μL of sample with a dynamic range spanning 5–6 orders of magnitude. For example, ADAP allows to detect anti-thyroglobulin autoantibodies from human patient plasma with a 1000-fold increased sensitivity over an FDA-approved radioimmunoassay. ADAP also allows to simultaneously detect multiple antibodies in one experiment, much more than
ELISA or
radioimmunoassay.
The study published in the ''
ACS Central Science'' journal mentioned that this testing method is 10,000 times more effective than the existing diagnostic techniques.
Another advantage of ADAP method is the simplicity. It can be adapted to such a cheap equipment as, for example, SlipChip.
It does not require complex and expensive equipment, it does not require working with hazardous radioactive reagents.
References
{{Immunologic techniques and tests
Immunologic tests