A rapid and sensitive chemiluminescence microfluidic immunoassay system based on super-paramagnetic microbeads for determination of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is described. In this system we use CO(2) laser to fabricate microfluidic chip, and use super-paramagnetic microbeads as solid carrier of antibody, chemiluminescence as detection signal. With this system we can perform AFP analysis within 20...

Prospective observations on 442 consecutive samples have confirmed that pregnancies with CNS malformations are regularly associated with an abnormal cellular content of amniotic fluid. A crude semiquantitative test of the cell content can give valuable clinical information in relation to borderline amniotic fluid alpha-fetoprotein values, and help to detect false positive AFP's.

Affinity chromatography of serum on lentil lectin bound to Sepharose 4B has been used to identify different forms of alpha-fetoprotein in serum of patients with liver disease. We studied eight patients with non-malignant liver disease, finding that 7-15% of the serum alpha-fetoprotein bound to the lectin. In contrast, for 15 patients with malignant liver disease, 25-83% of the serum alpha-fetop...

We confirmed the relation between maternal weight and serum alpha-fetoprotein concentration and have shown a further relation--to ethnic origin. Of these two, maternal weight is the more closely related. Oriental, white, and Hispanic women showed no significant differences in serum AFP concentrations when corrections for maternal weight were applied. Black women showed consistently higher value...

Lectin-affinity electrophoretic separation of serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) was carried out using AFP Differentiation Kits, which used Lens culinaris agglutinin-A (Kit L) and erythroagglutinating phytohemagglutinin (Kit P). Separated AFP bands were detected with a sensitive antibody-affinity blotting technique and determined quantitatively by densitometry, and the results were expressed as perc...

It has been generally thought that the polysaccharide moiety of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) maintains only serological specificity, while the lipid A portion determines various biological functions. However, we found that hemagglutination was a common function of the polysaccharide moiety of LPSs from important human enteropathogenic bacteria. Of the LPSs examined, Vibrio cholerae O139 LPS showed ...

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are expressed in a variety of cold-hardy organisms to prevent or slow internal ice growth. AFPs bind to specific planes of ice through their ice-binding surfaces. Fluorescence-based ice plane affinity (FIPA) analysis is a modified technique used to determine the ice planes to which the AFPs bind. FIPA is based on the original ice-etching method for determining AFP-bou...

1. The binding of 125I-labelled concanavalin A to isolated rat hepatocytes was studied at temperatures between 4 degrees C and 37 degrees C. At the latter temperature, concentrations of concanavalin A from 0.01 to 0.4 mg/ml were used. In all of these experiments, binding reached a plateau after 40--60 min, when 28--35% of the concanavalin A added was bound to the cells (cell density 8 x 10(6) c...

One novel electrochemical immunosensor was constructed by immobilizing capture antibody of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP Ab(1)) on a nafion/nanogold-particle modified glassy carbon electrode. With a sandwich immunoassay, one DNA-derived magnetic nanoprobe, simplified as DNA/(ZMPs-HRP-AFP Ab(2))(n), was employed for the detection of AFP. The fabricated procedure of the proposed biosensor was characteri...

Microvascular invasion (MVI) is well known to negatively influence outcomes following surgical treatment of hepatocellular cancer (HCC) patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rationale for prediction of MVI before liver transplantation (LT). Data of 200 HCC patients after LT were subject to retrospective analysis. MVI was present in 57 patients (28.5%). Tumor number (p = 0.001) and...