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AACC 2004 Poster Session
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ABSTRACT from the Poster Session:

Method: A variety of different analytes were measured using EIA microwell kits manufactured by BioCheck (Foster City, CA) according to the manual techniques described in the kit package inserts, and again using ChemWell®, a single-plate user-programmable automated EIA analyzer manufactured by Awareness Technology (Palm City, FL). Timing, mixing, and other user-programmable factors were modified to optimize assay precision, accuracy, standard value recovery, and correlation with results from the manual method.

Results: Once instrument programming parameters were set for each assay, ChemWell results using the BioCheck ELISA kits were found to be equivalent or better than results from the manually run assay. Precision obtained using two to four different control levels, and sample correlation data for 11 selected assays run on ChemWell are shown below:

Conclusion: Processing BioCheck ELISAs on ChemWell yielded accurate and precise results with improved throughput and equivalence with manually obtained results. The programmable parameters with the greatest effect on assay results were incubation timing and degree of mixing. For example, results obtained running an entire 96-well plate with one timer, were generally superior to results obtained when running a separate timer for each strip. This was attributed to eliminating mixing duration differences between strips, and to reducing strip-to-strip timing conflicts. Microwells processed automatically generally move about and mix more than wells processed manually. Several of the manual assay incubation times could be significantly shortened without compromise to performance, by using the automatic instrument’s mixer.
Each reagent and instrument system requires similar study to determine optimal programming parameters for reliability in clinical diagnostics.