Polymer‐Based Elemental Tags for Sensitive Bioassays

Abstract

It's elemental: A water-soluble polymer bearing multiple metal-chelating ligands has been used as a tag for bioassays with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The tag was covalently conjugated to antibodies, and the polymer–antibody constructs were loaded with lanthanide ions (Ln3+) and used for the simultaneous assay of five orthogonally labeled antibodies against cell surface antigens that differ in abundance by more than two orders of magnitude.