p53Bridge ELISA

A Protein Conformational Array (PCA) in a sandwich ELISA format where the plate is coated with a panel of 17 antibodies raised against peptides derived from the full length protein sequence of p53. Taken individually, each of these antibodies is strongly antigenic to the peptide sequence that was used in its production. However, when these peptides are incorporated into a full length correctly folded protein, the antigenicity of some of them is masked by the three dimensional structure of the protein and only a certain number of the antibodies respond. The result is a histogram which can be likened to a 'fingerprint' for correctly folded p53. For a testing sample from cancer tissue or cell line, if the protein is not mutated or the mutations do not impact the p53 HOS, the 'fingerprint' will match that of wild type p53. If the p53 mutations resulted in the alteration of the protein HOS, changes in the 'fingerprint' generated by the ELISA will point out differences between the mutant and wild type p53, this information may be valuable in the characterization of the p53 from cancer patient samples, cancer cell lines or other biological samples.