Rat Luminex® Discovery Assay

Controls are not offered for Luminex Discovery Assays, but may be formulated by the end user. A general guide may be available upon request. Controls are available for select Luminex High Performance Assays and can be found under the supplemental products tab on the product webpage. Some High Performance Luminex kits include controls and the controls will be listed in the materials provided section on the product datasheet. When included in the kit, controls are not sold separately.

R&D Systems recommend 35 µL sample volume for > 25 analytes to control the number of beads in the sample load when using Luminex MAGPIX® analyzer. Luminex MAGPIX® analyzer is a non-flow-based reader which utilizes a magnet to hold the magnetic microparticles in a monolayer in a chamber where the beads are imaged and then processed by the software to generate data. Since MAGPIX® system pushes the entire Sample Load Volume into the chamber, multiplex assay containing > 25 analytes may overload the chamber capacity with 50 µL sample load default setting. The captured images can have too many beads in them to give accurate results, and some of the analytes/regions may present lower than desired bead counts. 

The sample types typically validated by R&D Systems for Luminex assays contain soluble form of proteins, and therefore it is expected that the  soluble form of proteins are detected. It is possible there are assays that also detect the membrane form of  respective target proteins, however, R&D Systems does not generally evaluate our assays against samples known to contain membrane-bound proteins.

The feature to split based on dilution enables investigators to configure premix Luminex panels based on sample type (cell culture supernates, serum, and plasma). This keeps analytes requiring the same dilution factor within a single panel, while separating analytes requiring different dilutions. The recommended dilution factor for each analyte may be different for each sample type, and the suggested sample dilutions are built into the Luminex Customization Tool. Note that the suggested dilution factors are based on samples from healthy volunteers.

For Discovery Assays, each standard cocktail is a concentrate upon reconstitution with the volume specified on the Certificate of Analysis (CoA). After creating Standard 1 following the table in the product insert, the Standard 1 value is the concentration listed on the CoA.

It is recommended that a Calibration test be performed within one week prior to running an assay. A Verification test should be performed prior to data acquisition on the day of running an assay.