Development of a high-throughput, indirect antibody immobilization format chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA) for the determination of progesterone in human serum

A high-throughput and simple chemiluminescence (CL) enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA) for the determination of progesterone (P) in human serum was developed, with the highly sensitive 4-methoxy-4-(3-phosphatephenyl)-spiro-(1,2-dioxetane-3,2'-adamantane) (AMPPD)-alkaline phosphatase (ALP) system as the CL detection system. The results showed that the indirect immobilization of rabbit anti-progesterone polyclonal antibody (RAPA) through secondary antibody exhibited apparent advantages over direct coating in terms of antibody saving and improvement of the coating stability and uniformity. The direct analysis of P in human serum without extraction was realized by using 8-anilino-1-naphthalenesulphonic acid (ANS) to displace P from its binding proteins. The effect of several relevant parameters of the immunoreaction were examined and optimized. Compared with some commercial progesterone kits, the presented CLEIA has higher sensitivity with detection limitation as low as 0.06 ng/mL. The recoveries were 95.9-101%. The coefficient of variation was <8.4% and 9.9% for intra- and inter-assay precision, respectively. This method has been successfully applied to the evaluation of P in human serum. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.