Re-using 96-well ELISA Plates? - (Sep/28/2008 )

Quick question: The 96-well "Immulon-coated" plates used in ELISA are quite expensive ($500 for 100). So can they be re-used? Is there a cheaper way of obtaining them? I am trying to develop a target-protein quantification technique that is affordable and accessible to Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists that don't have the enormous amounts of funding provided to the medical profession via NIH. Any advise would be extraordinarily helpful.

Cheers,

M

If you have some kind of blocking step, I doubt very much that you could re-use the plate, even if you are using the same protein on the plate surface (assuming I understand your idea correctly at all - always doubtful with me at the moment!!). Washing is often a dicey process, and if you start stripping the protein from the plate, you a) reduce your potential signal-to-noise ratio, and you start freeing up potential sites for non-specific binding.

expensive?

it works out to 5.2 cents per sample for the plate ($5/plate).

it may be more than other plates but it still isn't too expensive.

Immulon is best...next try Corning. There are several other manufacturers.

In 20 years I have never heard of people re-using plates or coated wells...unless you want to recycle the plastic and injection mold your own plates.