Présentation
The Platform has acquired a large reputation for the development of dipsticks for the diagnosis of cholera, plague, meningitis and bloody diarrheas. The technology is indeed well adapted for field diagnosis of tropical diseases, owing to its low cost, simplicity and insensitivity to rugged conditions. The principle of such dipsticks is shown in the figure. As the dipstick is dipped in the biological fluid to be tested, antigen-antibody complexes are formed with the first antibody, which is conjugated to colloidal gold particles. The complexes then migrate by capillarity until they reach the line of immobilized capture antibody, which becomes materialized as a red line. A second line of immobilized rabbit anti-mouse Ig catches gold-conjugated antibodies that did not bind to the first line, and serves as a control for dipstick functioning.
