Applying hollow fibres for separating free and bound label in continuous-flow immunochemical detection

On-line liquid chromatography-immunochemical detection (LC-ICD) provides the possibility to individually monitor cross-reactive compounds overcoming the need of tedious fraction collection. ICD is performed as a post-column reaction detection system and is based on a two-step immunoreaction. In the first step unlabelled antibodies are added to the LC effluent and allowed to react with antigens (analytes) eluting from the LC column. The amount of analytes bound to the antibodies is measured by adding, in a second step, labelled antigen to the reaction mixture. For quantitation, free and bound label need to be separated prior to detection. The present paper describes a hollow fibre module (HFM), which can be used for this purpose. Separation of free and bound label occurs on discrimination by size. Using biotin as a model compound, a detection limit of 30 nmol/l can be reached employing anti-biotin antibodies and a low-molecular-mass fluorescence label in the LC-ICD system. Additional to low-molecular-mass labels, the HFM allows the use of small enzyme labels. In this context, horseradish peroxidase-labelled biotin was used as a label in combination with antibodies in the immunochemical detection of biotin. This allows future implementation of commercially available enzyme immunoassay kits in continuous-flow immunochemical detection.