Yalow - Berson technique

Major progress in the analytical use of antibodies occurred with the development of several fundamental techniques the ability to detect cell-bound antibody (Coombs Test, 1945) immunoprecipitation in gels (Ouchterlony, 1953) radioimmunoassay (Yalow and Berson, 1960) and monoclonal antibodies (Kohler and Milstein, 1975). These, together with a con-... 

Immunoassay as an analytical technique was introduced by Rosalind Yalow and Solomon Berson in 1960 with their use of anti-insulin antibodies to measure the concentration of the hormone in plasma. This advance, for which Rosalind Yalow was awarded the Nobel prize, was probably the most important single advance in biological measurement of the following two decades. Examples of the use of immunoassay may now be found in almost all areas of analytical biochemistry. 

Rosalyn Yalow received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1977 for developing immunoassay techniques in the 1950s, using proteins labeled with radioactive, 3,l to enable their detection.13 Yalow. a physicist, worked with Solomon Berson, a medical doctor, in this pioneering effort. 

The essential criteria for a useful analytical technique are specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision, simplicity, rapidity, economy, wide applicability, and freedom from hazard. It is well known that radioimmunoassay (RIA) was developed in 1959 by Yalow and Berson (Yl). Since then the radioimmunoassay method has been widely used in the field of clinical chemistry. Radioimmunoassay has inherent in it the advantages listed above. However, this method always requires special facilities for use and disposal of radioisotopes and consideration must be given to the fact that the labeled substances have short half-lives. Immunoassay methods are explosively increasing in use and development as an analytic technique in basic science as well as in clinical laboratory medicine (L1-L3, VI). With these points as background, efforts have been made to develop nonisotopic immunoassay methods or alternative immunoassay methods that are based on antigen-antibody reactions but do not involve use of a radioisotope. 

Berson SA, Yalow RS (1959) Species-specificity of human antibeef, pork insulin serum. J Clin Invest 38 2017-2025 Chard T (ed) (1990) An Introduction to Radioimmunoassay and Related Techniques. Elsevier Amsterdam... 

RIA is one of the primary techniques which has historically been important for clinical knowledge and testing for hormones. Indeed, RIA was first developed by Yalow and Berson to measure the circulating levels of the important hormone insulin. However, since this early description of the technique, very many similar assays have appeared for hundreds of substances differing markedly in chemical structure and biological activity. 

Antibody-based biosensing techniques utilize immunological reactions to measure the presence of a substance. The first format of immunoassay, radioimmunoassay (RIA), was discovered by Yalow and Berson in 1959 (247) for the quantitation of serum insulin. Thereafter, numerous studies have been conducted on the development of sensitive immunoassay (248-249). 

Thus, Landsteiner s work established many of the ground rules by which we operate today. Our contributions since his time have been mainly refinement of techniques and procedures and the expansion of his ideas. The major exception to this statement, and a crucial one indeed, is the development by Berson and Yalow of the technique of radioimmuno-... 

Since Berson and Yalow first described the radioimmunoassay for insulin, similar assays have appeared in the literature for several hundred substances that differ markedly in chemical structure and biological activity. These represent only a small fraction of the biologically important molecules that could be analyzed by this technique. This overview is intended primarily for the investigator who wishes to develop a new radioimmunoassay for a specific substance. It directs his attention to papers that provide background information and necessary procedural details. 

S. A. Berson and R. S. Yalow, in "Radioisotope Techniques in the Study of Protein Metabolism, p. 29. International Atomic Energy Agency Technical Reports Series No. 45, Vienna, 1965. 

Since the introduction of radioimmunoassay (RIA) by Yalow and Berson in 1959 (2), numerous books and review articles have been written on immunoassays. The reader is referred to the literature for a selection of reviews on general immunoassay methodology (3), RIA (4-7), theory [8] and statistical analysis (9,10), synthesis of immunogens (5,6,11,12), enzyme immunoassays (13,14), fluorescence immunoassay techniques (15), miscellaneous labels (16) and separation techniques (17), A brief discussion of general techniques is presented below. 

Immunoassay techniques are important for the specific determination of hormones, drugs, vitamins, and other compounds at nanogram and smaller levels. In these techniques, an antigen and a (specific) antibody react to form a complex or precipitate. The first analytical application was in the form of radioimmunoassay (RIA) in which Berson and Yalow demonstrated the ability to selectively measure... 

The first immunoassay technique was the isotopic dilution radioimmunoassay, developed by Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson for the detection of insulin in human blood. This work gained Yalow a share of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, but Berson was not honored because of Nobel rules stating that the prize cannot be awarded posthumously. The following passage, translated from the presentation speech, explains the technique in simple terms ...As a result of mixing in a test tube a known quantity of radioactive insulin with a known quantity of antibodies against insulin, a... 

Competitive binding radioimmunoassay. This assay procedure is also known as Inhibition radioimmunoassay and is regarded by many researchers as the real radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique certainly it was the first to be developed (by R.S.Yalow S.A.Berson in the late 1950s for the detection and quantitation of insulin in human blood plasma, work for which Rosalyn Yalow shared the 1977 Nobel Ehize in medicine her Nobel lecture [Science 200 (1978) 1236-1245] summarizes this work) and has been used to quantitate a wide range of compounds. For the quantitative assay of compound X by this procedure... 

The technique of the gastrin radioimmunoassay was further modified by Yalow and Berson, and it became apparent that plasma levels could differentiate between patients with various disease states. In addition, it was evident that hypergastrinemia associated with achlorhydria could be inhibited by oral administration of 300 mL of 0.1 N HCl by straw or by stomach tube. This confirmed the role of luminal pH in the regulation of antral gastrin secretion and of a class of HCl to antral glands. 

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