ELISA versus Neutralizing Titer - (Nov/27/2008 )

I'm trying to design an experiment but being relatively new to the field, I am having trouble distinguishing some terms, so any help is greatly appreciated!

To test the antibody response against a certain vaccine, I know that there are many methods that can be used.

What is the difference between what you would find from an ELISA endpoint titer versus a plaque-assay based neutralizing antibody titer?

I might have mixed some of the terms up, so please excuse me for that.

TBrady12,

In end point titration you titer all antibodies against a certain protein in your vaccine formulation. Neutralizing or not. High affinity or low affinity. The titer is just an estimate of the combined effects of affinity and concentration of your whole polyclonal antibody pool. In a plaque based assay, you would be measuring only the neutralizing effect of your antibodies. Some would argue that this is the essential information that you need from a vaccine based experiment, but there is more to antibodies than just their neutralizing ability. So for example, a very high affinity antibody that is not neutralizing can still activate complement or ADCC and you would not measure its effects in the plaque assay. You need the combined view of both methods.

I hope I made some sense.
Cheers,
Miha

I found this reference:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...i?artid=1234049

I think it answers your questions and may give you a few insights into the testing you wish to do.

Thank you for your help!

Thank you very much. This article definitely helped.