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Simple Plex™ Assays for Viral Titer Quantification

Fast and reproducible viral capsid measurement is essential for those focused on gene transfer, as part of a cell and gene therapy workflow. While traditional plate-based and dot blot assays can be useful, they are often complex, time-consuming, and non-standardized. See how Simple Plex assays on the EllaTM platform are used for viral titer quantification. Next, meet Ella and request pricing. Finally, choose the Simple Plex Assay that best meets your needs.

Table of Contents

AAV PROGEN

Viral titer with Simple Plex Immunoassays

Understanding the number of particles, or infectious units, in your viral prep is essential, as it directly determines the viral transduction efficiency (i.e., how effectively the viruses will deliver genetic material into the target cells) and the resulting number of integrated gene copies. Accurate viral titration is a cornerstone of viral transduction workflows, ensuring that sufficient viral preps have been performed to achieve the desired transduction efficiency and generate reliable results during cell transfection experiments.

Simple Plex Viral Titer assays, available on the Ella platform, provide a fast, reliable, and reproducible solution for viral titration. These assays streamline the process, minimizing variability while delivering precise quantification of viral capsid proteins across a wide dynamic range. Whether you are working with adeno-associated viruses (AAV) or lentivirus, Simple Plex offers assays tailored for both, making it easier to optimize workflows and ensure the success of your gene delivery or cell therapy applications.

 

Simple Plex AAV Assays are paired with PROGEN AAV Antibodies 

For application of AAV vectors in gene therapy, the determination of total capsid titer is essential. PROGEN AAV Titration ELISAs are well-known for their ability to provide reliable and accurate quantification of AAV total capsid titers, based on the proven sensitivity and specificity of PROGEN AAV antibodies for AAV intact particles. The Simple Plex AAV assays offer the same proven specificity as the industry-leading PROGEN ELISA along with the convenience, sample-conserving, and timesaving advantages inherent in the fully automated Ella platform.

All steps of the Simple Plex AAV assays on Ella are highly automated thanks to the microfluidic cartridge—everything is preloaded, even the calibration curve. Just pipette your diluted samples onto the cartridge, add wash buffer, press start in the Ella Runner Software. In addition, each Simple Plex AAV cartridge includes a fully built-in and pre-validated standard curve. This eliminates the need to prepare, plate, or serially dilute standards—reducing hands-on time, removing a major source of operator variability, and helping ensure consistent, reproducible quantitation across assays, cartridges, and users.

Inside the microfluidic cartridge are glass nano reactors (GNRs), the core of the Simple Plex Assay. In Simple Plex AAV Assays, the GNRs are coated with the PROGEN antibodies that work to capture intact AAV capsids. That same corresponding AAV antibody is also lyophilized in the cartridge to act as the detection reagent. The Ella Platform’s fluorescence detection system enables detection across a broad dynamic range, minimizing the need to run multiple dilutions to find the ideal MRD. The efficient cartridge design, featuring three independent GNRs per sample inlet, eliminates the need to run samples in duplicate. In total, from set up to fully processed and analyzed results takes less than 90 minutes.

Serotype PROGEN Monoclonal Antibody Simple Plex Assay LLOQ (capsids/mL) Simple Plex Assay ULOQ (capsids/mL)
AAV1 ADK1 2.62 X 106 1.0 X 1010
AAV2 A20 3.41 X 106 1.3 X 1010
AAV6 ADK1 3.04 X 106 1.16 X 1010
AAV8 ADK8 2.47 X106 9.428 X 1010

 

Creating Lentiviral Vectors With Fast, Reliable Viral Titration

With the growing use of lentiviral vectors derived from HIV-1 in gene transfer workflows, researchers need fast, reliable viral titer quantification during process development. The 3-to-6-hour timeframe required to run a standard ELISA is a challenge for operators who increasingly require results quickly to inform real-time decision-making.

The Simple Plex assay for the detection of human HIV-1 Gag p24 combines high throughput with superior accuracy and precision to enable rapid quantification of lentiviral capsid proteins throughout different stages of cell and vector manufacturing. The automated, reproducible nature of the Simple Plex p24 assay helps eliminate user error, making it an ideal tool in good manufacturing practice (GMP) environments where quality, standardization of process, assay transfer, and scalability are highly desirable.

View HIV-1 GAG p24 Assay
Automated AAV (1,2,6,8) titration assays on the Ella platform are highly correlated with PROGEN ELISAs

Linear correlations of Simple Plex AAV assays and PROGEN AAV ELISAs. The aggregated Simple Plex and PROGEN ELISA data was plotted and a linear fit was applied to the data for each AAV serotype. The Simple Plex AAV assays are corelated with the corresponding PROGEN ELISAs with an R2=0.99 (2a-2d). The data shows the quantitative range of both assays overlap.

Bio-Techne's Tools For Cell And Gene Therapy

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Learn About Bio-Techne Cell & Gene Therapy Solutions

In a multi-use study conducted by 7 operators on 11 Ella instruments, the Simple Plex HIV-1 p24 assay demonstrated great precision and reproducibility. The automated, microfluidic design of the Simple Plex assays running on Ella helps eliminate user-introduced variability by offering built-in standard curves and separate channels for each analyte, which also ensures no cross-reactivity. The results for the low control and high control intra and inter assays were reproducible with an overall coefficient of variation (CV) between 2% and 11%.

Inter n Intra Simple Plex HIV-1 p24 assay
The Simple Plex HIV p24 assay offers a reliable and efficient method for detection of HIV p24.

The Simple Plex HIV-1 p24 assay has demonstrated impressive linearity to showcase the accuracy within the expected assay range. The results for the five diluted points show that diluted samples are able to provide reliable results (Figure 3). The automated cartridge is designed to eliminate the lengthy incubations typical of traditional plate-based immunoassays while ensuring precise and consistent results across multiple users.

Simple Plex HIV-1 p24 assay has demonstrated impressive linearity to showcase the accuracy within the expected assay range
Recovery of each dilution point is well within the 80% and 120% range of expected values.

Ella satisfies the demands of timely data generation for maintaining efficient production and overcomes the lengthy investigations and sample retests that often result from human error. You also get excellent assay sensitivity and highly reproducible results, which helps ensure you get the high-quality data required to meet regulatory standards for titration throughout the viral vector production workflow. 

Documents

Simple Plex AAV application note

Application Note: Simple Plex AAV Assays

In this application note, we demonstrate assay comparability between the Simple Plex AAV assays and the PROGEN AAV Titration ELISA Kits.

Thumbnail image of Ella brochure

Brochure: Meet Ella

Ella is your immunoassay problem solver. Simple Plex assays are hands-free, single or multi-analyte with no cross-reactivity, and reproducible even across multiple labs. 

Analytical Technologies for Gene Therapy Ebook

eBook: Analytical Technologies for Gene Therapy

Inside this eBook, explore how our analytical instruments support multiple critical quality attributes from development to clinic.