A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW ON THE APPLICATION OF FLOW-INJECTION TECHNIQUES IN IMMUNOANALYSIS

For more than a decade, immunoassay methods have held great promise for use not only in their classic clinical applications but also in food, pesticides, process and quality control, industrial fermentations, etc. A great number of publications have appeared in these fields. Flow injection analysis (FIA) is a technique that allows the automatic analysis of a large number of samples and/or continuous monitoring, and it has been proven to be applicable to a variety of analytical problems. Nevertheless, antibody-supported flow injection systems have received relatively little attention. Only recently, the advantage of the specificity inherent to most immune reactions began to be exploited in FIA procedures. Flow injection coupled to immunoassays (FIIA) is arising as a powerful tool for the development of analytical protocols, and the application of FIA techniques is expected to contribute enormously in improving the speed and quality of immunoassays. This article gives an overview on the applications of flow injection techniques in immunoanalysis as well as examples of various immunoanalysis formats commonly employed to visualize the primary antibody-antigen reaction. Finally, recent developments and new trends in the field of FIIA, such as immunosensors, are also considered.