Special Issue "Bioassays"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Bertold Hock
Chair of Proteomics and Bioanalytics, Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Alte Akademie 6, D-85354 Freising, Germany
Website: http://portal.mytum.de/forschung/eoe/profile/hock/index_html
E-Mail: hock@wzw.tum.de
Phone: +49 8161 713396
Fax: +49 8161 232030
Interests: immunochemical analysis; immunoassays; bioassays; receptor assays; monoclonal and recombinant antibodies; bioresponse-linked instrumental analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Bioanalysis studies biological responses in order to gain information on toxicological or pharmacological impacts caused by chemical or physical effects on living systems. A prominent example dates back to the nineteenth century when the Finnish scientist William Nylander related the disappearance of lichen populations in Paris to the influence of coal-burning furnaces. In this case lichens were used as bioindicators—as it has been discovered later on—for SO₂ in the air. Another historic example is the life-saving practice of coal miners when they took canary birds to their mines. These birds are extremely sensitive to carbon monoxide and therefore signal by their death the immediate threat to humans. In this case biotests with whole organisms were performed.

Modern bioanalytical tools have experienced a remarkable development during the past. Today they offer a broad spectrum of options, which are mainly exploited in environmental analysis, toxicology and pharmacology.The emergence of new fields, particularly genomics, proteomics and systems biology, as well as the appearance of advanced techniques such as genetic engineering to create reporter organisms have given bioanalysis a new dimension. This does not mean that established classical test, being used for decades, are obsolete. On the contrary, tests with whole organisms experience a remarkable revival. They benefit from progress in standardization and enable improved validity and reliability. However, tests at the cellular and biomolecular level, often coupled to sensing devices ("biosensors"), and tests with reporter organisms, mostly microorganisms, may eventually prevail as a consequence of current trends. The reasons are higher reproducibility and precision, combined with lower costs. The whole spectrum of tests - independent of the biological material - falls under the term bioassays.

An intriguing problem, most frequently encountered in environmental science, stems from the question whether and to which extent suborganismic bioassays are relevant to the entire organism. Suborganismic tests as well as tests with reporter organisms clearly cover only a small spectrum of possible bioeffects. To get around this problem, multifunctional tests in a possibly miniaturized format of test arrays can be constructed. A skillful combination of subcellular tests representing major classes of bioresponses are expected to solve the dilemma outlined above.

An alternative is the analysis of the transcriptome and proteome. Changes in gene expression and protein expression patterns in model organisms (or cell cultures) can be related to molecular targets for chemical or even physical stresses and the involved signal transduction pathways. It may even be possible to obtain hints for the cause for the observed changes. The scope of this approach is clearly limited to single species or populations. But eventually it may also include entire ecosystems, which are particularly subject to injuries with far reaching impacts on mankind.

Yet bioanalysis is not able to provide information on the chemical or physical nature of the observed impact. It yields information on biological activity expressed in toxicological or pharmacological equivalents. In contrast, chemical analysis delivers information on the composition of samples of interest. In this way, structure and concentration of pollutants can be determined. In principle it is possible to combine both approaches by bioresponse-linked instrumental analysis. Here biomolecular components such as receptors or enzymes serve as targets for bioactive substances. This means that classical binding assays providing information on toxicological or pharmacological equivalents can be combined with the structural analysis of the bound ligands.

This outlook underlines the enormous potential of bioanalytical tools. This special issue of "Bioassays" is devoted to the entire spectrum of bioanalysis. It ranges from pharmacological and toxicological tests for drug development and pharmaceutical products, medical applications such as immunogenicity testing to environmental analysis. Validation and standardization are important aspects of this venture.

Prof. Dr. Bertold Hock
Guest Editor

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• bioanalyis
• biomonitoring
• biosensors
• biotests
• cell-based assays
• toxicity testing

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Recent Advances in Rapid Radiobioassay for Radiological/Nuclear Emergency Management
Authors: Baki B. Sadi, Chunsheng Li and Gary H. Kramer
Affiliation: National Internal Radiation Assessment Section, Radiation Protection Bureau, Health Canada, 775 Brookfield Road, A.L. 6302D, Ottawa, ON K1A 1C1, Canada; E-Mail : baki_sadi@hc-sc.gc.ca (B.B.S)
Abstract: Most of the developed countries are currently believed to be under a home-grown or foreign terrorist’s threat involving a nuclear/radiological (R/N) event. Millions of dollars have been spent by the countries like The United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Australia and Germany in order to develop capabilities based on science and technology (S&T) to prepare for and respond to such an event. Development of rapid measurement techniques for ionizing radiation has been identified as one of the key requirements for such S&T capability. In case of a nuclear accident or in an intentional release of radioactive materials in a malicious activity through an improvised nuclear device (IND) or a radiological dispersal device (RDD), a large number people will be needed to be screened to assess their internal radiation exposure and to decide on the subsequent protective action. The classical radiobioassay techniques used in routine monitoring of internal doses at nuclear facilities, government organizations and research institutions are tedious and time consuming with typical sample turn-around-time from days to weeks. These classical radiobioassay techniques are, therefore, not suitable in an R/N emergency. This review article will provide an overview of the recent efforts made by the various governments and research organizations, worldwide, in order to develop rapid radiobioassay methods to prepare for and respond to a radiological/nuclear emergency.

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays for the Detection and Quantification of Veterinary Antimicrobials: A Review
Author: Claudia Sheedy
Affiliation: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge Research Center, 5403 – 1st Avenue South, P.O. Box 3000, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1J 4B1; E-Mail: Claudia.Sheedy@AGR.GC.CA
Abstract: Since their discovery, antibiotics have been instrumental in treating infectious diseases that were previously known to kill humans and animals (Kumar et al., 2004). In food-animal production, where infectious diseases can be problematic due to the large number of animals in confined operations, antibiotics are commonly used for reproduction, growth promotion, disease treatment and prevention (Watanabe et al., 2002). In fact, antibiotics are the class of veterinary drugs most widely used in agriculture, and from 60 to 80% of all livestock and poultry will receive antibiotics in feed or water at some time during their production lifespan. It has now become clear, however, that this widespread use of veterinary antibiotics is not without consequences (Kumar et al., 2004). Antibiotic residues are being found in animal tissues, excreted in their faeces and urine, and can reach several environmental matrices via manure application. As concerns over the occurrence of veterinary antibiotics in water and food animal products such as eggs, milk, meat and honey increase, the development of rapid and high-throughput antimicrobial residues analytical methods is required. Several antibody-based techniques such as immunoassays (mostly), immunosensors and immunoaffinity chromatography (to a lesser extent) have been developed and used to complement GC and LC-MS analysis. Immunoassays are simple, cost-effective and rapid. Moreover, they require small sample volumes (Zhao et al., 2007), and very few if any concentration/sample pre-treatment. Although immunoassays can be quite sensitive, they have been mostly developed to screen samples prior to further characterization/validation by standard analytical techniques. Immunoassays are becoming popular tools to rapidly assess food quality and environmental health. This article is a review of immunoassays developed for the detection and quantification of veterinary antimicrobials in environmental matrices, animal edible tissues, honey, eggs and milk.

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Review of Bioassay-Guided Fractionation, Effect-Directed Analysis and Related Techniques
Author: Michael G. Weller
Affiliation: BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Division 1.5 Bioanalytics, Richard-Willstaetter-Strasse 11, 12489 Berlin, Germany;
E-Mail: michael.weller@bam.de
Abstract: The success of modern methods in analytical chemistry sometimes obscures the problem that the ever increasing amount of analytical data does not necessarily gives more insight of practical relevance. On the other hand, toxicology and bioactivity-based systems can deliver valuable information about biological effects of complex materials on humans, other species or even ecosystems. However, the observed effects often cannot be clearly assigned to specific chemical compounds. In these cases, an unambiguous cause – effect relationship cannot be established. Sometimes, not even reproducibility of the effects can be assured. Effect-directed analysis tries to connect instrumental analytical techniques with a biological/biochemical entity, which identifies or isolates substances of biological relevance. Although these concepts are only partially established in routine analysis today, their application has been successfully demonstrated in many fields, either as proof-of-principle studies or even for complex real-world samples. The review discusses the different approaches, their advantages and limitations and finally shows some practical examples in research and industry.