Chapter 234 Lanthanide Chelates as Luminescent Labels in Biomedical Analyses

Abstract

Time-resolved fluorometry using lanthanide chelates as luminescent labels is a potentially superior technique for biomedical analyses. This chapter describes the applications of lanthanide chelates as luminescent labels in bioanalysis and biotechnology such as immunoassay, DNA hybridization assay, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing, and cell imaging. An advantage of this technique is that time-resolved fluorometry using lanthanide chelates with long lifetime can remove background fluorescence, thus increasing the sensitivity, and is clearly seen in assays where the sample contains many coexisting materials in relatively high concentration. An example of analyses where time-resolved measurement is less effective in terms of sensitivity compared to immunoassay is DNA analyses, where DNA is extracted from body samples and the sample solution contains less matrix materials than serum.