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Virus neutralization assays measure neutralizing antibodies in serum and plasma, and the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) is considered the gold standard for measuring levels of these antibodies for many viral diseases. We have developed procedures for the standard PRNT, microneutralization assay (MNA) and pseudotyped virus neutralization assay (PNA) for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The MNA offers advantages over the PRNT by reducing assay time, allowing increased throughput and reducing operator workload while remaining dependent upon the use of wild-type virus. This ensures that all severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 antigens are present, but Biosafety Level 3 facilities are required. In addition to the advantages of MNA, PNA can be performed with lower biocontainment (Biosafety Level 2 facilities) and allows for further increases in throughput. For each new vaccine, it is critical to ensure good correlation of the neutralizing activity measured using PNA against the PRNT or MNA. These assays have been used in the development and licensure of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AstraZeneca; Oxford University) and Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen) coronavirus disease 2019 vaccines and are critical for demonstrating bioequivalence of future vaccines.

Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been widely used to measure antibody titers for evaluating the immunogenicity of a vaccine. However, there is as yet no generally accepted way of expressing the ELISA results in the case of experimental vaccines, since there is usually no uniform standard. Both end point and single dilution methods have significant disadvantages. In this paper, we obtained reproducible data with fewer dilutions of samples by addition of serially diluted standard serum to each ELISA plate. Since this ELISA method gives reliable antibody titer with less labor than other methods, it can strongly support vaccine development.

Neutralizing anti-drug antibody (NAb) assays often have lower drug tolerance (DT) than trough drug concentrations, potentially under-estimating NAb incidence. To improve DT, drug-specific proteins were coupled to magnetic beads to deplete drug in the sample.

Hereditary angioedema (HAE) types I and II are characterized by functional C1 inhibitor (fC1-INH) deficiency which results in bradykinin overproduction. Sensitive, specific and robust methods to quantitate fC1-INH in human samples are required for diagnosing HAE and/or to measure pharmacodynamic activity of C1-INH drugs in clinical studies.

The widespread environmental contaminant β-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) is a developmental neurotoxicant that can induce long-term learning and memory deficits. Studies have shown high transplacental transfer of 3H-BMAA and a significant uptake in fetal brain.

The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Koch is one of the most serious pests in greenhouses and has developed high resistance to many classes of acaricides rapidly. Three T. urticae populations were collected from vegetable greenhouses in Antalya and Muğla, Turkey. These populations showed high resistance levels to abamectin ranging between 223 and 404 fold compared to a susceptible population. The interaction of some synergists (piperonyl butoxide; PBO, diethyl maleate; DEM and S-benzyl O,O-diisopropyl phosphorothioate; IBP) with abamectin was analyzed showing possible implication of esterases in resistances in the three populations studied. The activities of esterase, glutathione S-transferase (GST) and cytochrome P450 (p450) was determined using α-naphthyl acetate, 1-chloro-2,4 dinitrobenzene (CDNB) and 7-ethoxycoumarin (7-EC) as substrates, respectively. In all field populations, esterase, glutathione S-transferase and P450 activities were higher, when compared to the susceptible population (GSS). The presence of known abamectin resistance target site mutations (G314D and G326E) on the glutamate gated chloride channels was also examined. However, no target site–resistance mutation was detected in all three populations. According to our results, detoxification enzymes, but no target site intensivity seem to play role in abamectin resistance in field T. urticae populations from Turkey.

The protease-activated receptor 2, expressed on keratinocytes but not on melanocytes, has been ascribed functional importance in the regulation of pigmentation by phagocytosis of melanosomes. Inhibition of protease-activated receptor 2 activation by synthetic serine protease inhibitors requires keratinocyte-melanocyte contact and results in depigmentation of the dark skinned Yucatan swine, suggesting a new class of depigmenting mechanism and agents. We therefore examined natural agents that could exert their effect via the protease-activated receptor 2 pathway. Here we show that soymilk and the soybean-derived serine protease inhibitors soybean trypsin inhibitor and Bowman-Birk inhibitor inhibit protease-activated receptor 2 cleavage, affect cytoskeletal and cell surface organization, and reduce keratinocyte phagocytosis. The depigmenting activity of these agents and their capability to prevent ultraviolet-induced pigmentation are demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo. These results imply that inhibition of the protease-activated receptor 2 pathway by soymilk may be used as a natural alternative to skin lightening.