Study Group report 2005: capillary agglutination (Platform Diagnostics)
This is the final report on the problem of capillary agglutination technology, brought to ESGI53 by Platform Diagnostics Ltd. Click on the link at the bottom to download the full report as a pdf document.

Report authors
Chris Breward (University of Oxford)
Giles Richardson (University of Nottingham)

Introduction
Platform Diagnostics were trying to develop the technology in order to detect the hormone hCG in the urine of pregnant women. The principle on which this device works is based on a relatively old technology termed latex agglutination which has been in use in clinical laboratories since the 1950s. The latex agglutination procedure, as it was originally devised, is performed by coating many latex microparticles with an antibody to the analyte. These are then mixed with a sample on a glass slide and the slide examined under a microscope. If latex particle aggregates are detected in this mixture it demonstrates the presence of analyte in the sample, the aggregates being formed by the analyte binding to antibodies on different microspheres.

The Study Group report reveals several important drawbacks of the proposed technology and looks at on a totally new approach for measuring hCG concentrations.

Download 'PlatformDiagnostics-report.pdf' (207 Kb).