The use of epitope arrays in immunodiagnosis of infectious disease: Hepatitis C virus, a case study

Dror D. Siman-Tov, Romy Zemel, Ran Tur Kaspa, Jonathan M. Gershoni

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Serodiagnosis of infectious disease is often based on the detection of pathogen-specific antibodies in a patient's blood. For this, mixtures of pathogen-related antigens are used as bait to capture corresponding antibodies in solid phase immunoassays such as enzyme immunoassay (EIA). Western blots provide improved diagnostic power as compared with EIA due to the fact that the mixture of markers in the EIA well is resolved and tested as individual antigens on the Western blot. Hence, confirmation of EIA results is accomplished using the antigen arrays of Western blots. Here we took this approach one step further and tested the attributes of using epitope arrays in a diagnostic platform coined "combinatorial diagnostics." As a case in point, we tested a panel of phage-displayed epitope-based markers in the serodiagnosis of hepatitis C virus (HCV). The repertoire of HCV antigens was deconvoluted into panels of distinct linear and conformational epitopes and tested individually by quantitative EIA. Combinatorial diagnostics proved to be effective for the discrimination between positive and negative sera as well as serotyping of HCV.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)63-70
Number of pages8
JournalAnalytical Biochemistry
Volume432
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Jan 2013
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Horowitz Foundation through RAMOT of Tel Aviv University and by the generous support of the Frankel Foundation. Jonathan Gershoni is the incumbent of the David Furman Chair of Immunobiology in Cancer.

Funding

This study was supported by the Horowitz Foundation through RAMOT of Tel Aviv University and by the generous support of the Frankel Foundation. Jonathan Gershoni is the incumbent of the David Furman Chair of Immunobiology in Cancer.

FundersFunder number
Frankel Foundation
Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy
Tel Aviv University

    Keywords

    • Antibody serodiagnostics
    • Combinatorial diagnostics
    • HCV serotyping
    • Peptide epitopes
    • Phage display

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