Enzyme immunoassay of human chorionic gonadotropin employing beta-galactosidase as label

An enzyme-linked immunoassay was applied to the determination of hCG, a glycoprotein hormone usually assayed by RIA. For this purpose, an enzyme hormone conjugate was prepared by reacting hCG with beta-D-galactosidase (beta-Gal.) of E. coli in the presence of N-(m-maleimidobenzoyloxy) succinimide (MBS) as coupling reagent. The conjugate, after purification by affinity and gel chromatographies, was shown to exhibit sufficient enzyme activity and immunoactivity. The immunoassay of hCG was performed by the double antibody method and, using this assay, 0.4-250 mIU/ml hCG were detectable. This was about 10 times as sensitive as the RIA. Difficulty was experienced when this method was utilized for the determination of hCG in plasma samples from patients. Since the presence of the plasma may have affected this assay method, the following improvements were made: 1) the same volume of hormone-free plasma was added to the standard solutions of hCG, and 2) the volume of plasma sample was 10 microliter. The performance and validity of this assay were comparable to the RIA using [125I]hCG as tracer. The dose-response curves of both assay have the same slope and there was no significant difference between the values (correlation coefficient, Y = 0.96X + 1.53).