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Famed Medical Test 'ELISA' Celebrates Its 35th

Every so often, a new technology completely changes the medical practice. It's impossible to imagine an internist without a stethoscope, or an orthopedist without an X-ray machine.

In 1971, two Swedish scientists, Eva Engvall and Peter Perlman, who died in 2005, invented a test that revolutionized medicine. Called the ELISA test, the method uses antibodies to seek out the presence of hormones or viruses. In the past, testing for these was cumbersome and time-consuming. But ELISA tests can be done in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. The test is widely used today, for detecting malaria in small villages in Africa to home pregnancy testing.

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 What is an ELISA test?

However, since ELISA kits are fairly inexpensive to make, they have been adapted for use outside the lab. There are kits to detect food allergens that are useful for producers, restaurants, and individuals who suffer from extreme allergic reactions. Pregnancy tests are sandwich ELISAs that use capillary action to automate the detection of a pregnancy hormone. The home HIV test uses direct or indirect ELISA in a similar process to detect HIV antigens or antibodies, respectively. Many other diseases can be detected with ELISA kits, too.

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ELISA remains a classic tool for diagnostics, industry, and research.

People have been consuming bread for hundreds of years, and it’s still as prevalent as ever. Likewise, ELISA testing, which got its big push into clinical laboratory practice in the 1970s and ’80s, is still considered the tried and trusted method for detecting clinical bio-markers. Although several additional and useful technologies have been introduced over the years, there are many good reasons why ELISA hasn’t disappeared.

The evolution of the ELISA and other immunoassays

If you’re reading this blog there’s a high chance you’re using antibodies in your work, in some form of immunoassay. However, many of us rarely stop and think about where these antibodies come from and how their development has been fundamental for the evolution of life sciences.

The history of ELISA from creation to COVID-19 research

ELISA is a method used to quantitatively detect an antigen (i.e., toxin or foreign substance) within a sample. Most ELISAs are run on microplates, with the bottom of the microplate serving as the solid surface to which an antigen of interest attaches either directly or via an antibody. ELISA microplate readers are typically used by researchers to read and analyze multiple plates simultaneously and obtain accurate ELISA measurements at high throughput.

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StatPearls

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is a labeled immunoassay that is considered the gold standard of immunoassays. This immunological test is very sensitive and is used to detect and quantify substances, including antibodies, antigens, proteins, glycoproteins, and hormones. The detection of these products is accomplished by complexing antibodies and antigens to produce a measurable result.