AlphaLISA assays to improve the vaccine development process.

Testing vaccines involves expensive animal models and extensive in vitro characterization. Techniques such as ELISA and ELISPOT are traditionally used to measure immunogenicity, assess the potency of recombinant vaccines and detect the presence of biological contaminants. However, these time-proven techniques suffer from technical limitations affecting the overall vaccine development process. Limitations include: consumption of large volumes of biological sample (eg. plasma), high variability, and limited dynamic range. Furthermore, ELISA and ELISPOT involve a multitude of blocking and wash steps which limit their automatability. AlphaLISA technology is an exceptionally sensitive non-wash immunoassay platform which alleviates all the aforementioned drawbacks, allowing one to improve biologics development processes. Examples of how AlphaLISA assays can be used to assess the potency of vaccines will be presented.