Hapten design for compound-selective antibodies: ELISAS for environmentally deleterious small molecules

We have developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the herbicide simazine with virtually no recognition of propazine and very low (8%) recognition of atrazine. In this research we have developed a generalized "size-exclusion" concept for designing immunogen hapten structures. The hapten should contain appendages smaller than those of the target analyte thereby generating polyclonal antibodies that exclude recognition of analytes larger than the target molecule. The use of this size-exclusion model, when extended to include coating/tracer haptens, is also able to predict suitable structures for ELISA development. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.