Water-soluble conductive polymer homogeneous immunoassay (SOPHIA) - A novel immunoassay capable of automation

Conductive polymers are extensively conjugated macromolecules able to conduct electricity in their doped state and having a UV-visible spectrum which undergoes important chromatic modifications when subjected to pH changes or to oxido-reductive processes. This article describes a novel homogeneous immunoassay in which a water-soluble conductive polymer is used as the label. When antigen-antibody binding occurs, the local pH near the complex is modified. Such a pH change is in turn able to induce modifications in the absorbance at a characteristic wavelength of a conductive polymer covalently linked to either the antigen or the antibody. Consequently, the extent of tracer binding can be directly monitored by photometry during incubation. We present examples which validate the concept and exemplify its applicability in quantitative competitive immunoassays for human C-reactive protein and human serum albumin, as performed in a Cobas-Mira automated analyzer.