Immunoassays are the most common technique clinical laboratories use for therapeutic drug monitoring.
Antibodies that recognize specific drugs have been developed. Although most drugs are too small to evoke an immune response, scientists can conjugate drugs to immunogenic proteins to produce antibodies that recognize drug-specific epitopes.
Several methods utilize the principles of immunoassay for the detection and quantification of therapeutic drugs in serum. Some of these methods are:
- Particle-enhanced turbidimetric inhibition immunoassay (PETINIA)
- Cloned enzyme donor immunoassay (CEDIA)
- Fluorescence Polarization Immunoassay (FPIA)
- Chemiluminescent assays (EMIT)
