Clinical Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis

A collection of detailed capillary electrophoresis protocols designed exclusively for clinical applications. The protocols furnish assays for serum and urine protein analysis, haemoglobin separation and the detection of CSF proteins, lipoproteins, myoglobin, cryoglobulins, HbA1c and Cathepsin. In Clinical Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis, Stephen Palfrey brings together for first time a collection of detailed capillary electrophoresis protocols designed exclusively for clinical applications. Written by the leading scientists who have often perfected these methods in their own laboratories, the protocols furnish new and more powerful assays for many routine serum and blood tests now regularly performed in clinical laboratories, including urine protein analysis, hemoglobin separation, and the detection of CSF proteins, lipoproteins, myoglobin, cryoglobulins, HbA1c, and cathepsin. The protocols offered for DNA studies include double-stranded DNA analysis, the prenatal diagnosis of Down's syndrome, Rh D/d genotyping, the identification of mutated p53 oncogene, and the detection of microsatellite instability in cancers. Many of the methods can be automated to replace the more costly and labor-intensive tests that are currently used in most clinical laboratories. Clinical Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis demonstrates clearly the simplicity, versatility, and power of CE over conventional methods. It offers to beginning clinical investigators, as well as established laboratories new to the technique, a representative range of highly practical CE methods-assays that are not only certain to become ever more productive, but are already eminently useful today. The term "electrophoresis" was first used by Michaelis in 1909, to - scribe the migration of colloids in an electric field. The first practical elect- phoresis method was described by Tiselius in 1937. He used a U-tube filled with buffer layered on top of sample; migration could be monitored using Schlieren optics. In zone electrophoresis, the U-tube was replaced by paper, a support material employed simply to prevent or minimize diffusion of ions, so that ions applied in a narrow strip to the paper will separate and remain as relatively discrete zones. Paper was superceded by a variety of other media, - cluding cellulose acetate, hydrolyzed starch (starch gel), agarose, and polyacry- mide. The latter, in addition to being a support medium, has size-sieving properties. From the basic zone electrophoresis, other means of separation have been dev- oped. These include, isoelectric focusing, isotachophoresis, density gradient el- trophoresis, and various forms of immunoelectrophoresis. In some ways Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) has gone full circle back to the original method of Tiselius. In its simplest form, separations occur in a buffer solution within a glass (fused silica) tube and detection occurs as sample moves past an optical window. CE has rapidly developed into a technique that rivals HPLC in its versatility. All the classical electrophoretic separations-zone, IEF, and isotachophoresis-have their counterparts in CE. Excitingly so, and - thoritatively treated in Clinical Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis.