Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) are significant environmental pollutants. Comprehensive assessment of their environmental impact is difficult because the PCDD/Fs are a mixture of 210 possible chlorinated isomers. Moreover, the analysis of the 2,3,7,8-substituted toxic congener PCDD/Fs currently requires the specificity, sensitivity and expense of high resolution GC/MS. Antibody based analytical methods have demonstrated utility for both high throughput screening and quantitative analysis of environmental samples. However, previous PCDD/F immunoassay development programs have not been particularly successful. There is a clear scientific, commercial and economic need for a sensitive PCDD/F toxic congener specific immunoassays. The goal of this project is to develop laboratory based immunoanalytical methods that can be used to substantially reduce the overall cost of PCDD/F toxic congener analysis. The goal of Phase I was to prove that they could develop specific and sensitive 2,3,7,8-TetraCDD directed antibodies. Phase I demonstrated this goal with the development of a Toxic Equivalents (TEQ) directed polyclonal serum based assay and a sensitive, 2,3,7,8-TetraCDD specific monoclonal antibody based assay. The Phase II studies will develop the full set of required PCDD/F congener specific MAbs and competitors, prove commercial feasibility through the market introduction of specific immunoassay products and initiate the development of immunoaffinity reagents and femtogram sensitive assays.
NOT AVAILABLE
