Selected category: autoimmune disease

By Dajana Domik

When patients exhibit symptoms common to more than one disease or invading pathogen it is useful to have a universal biomarker that can help you narrow down the potential causes, monitor progress of an ongoing condition, and give you an advanced warning if the condition is going to worsen. In many cases, neopterin is that biomarker. It gives an early warning signal that the patient’s immune system has been triggered—often before disease-specific clinical symptoms have presented themselves. Here we explore neopterin, its origins, and what makes it such an important and universal marker.

By Dr Manuel Bauer 

As we saw in part 1 of this blog series, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is potentially the new gold standard for therapeutic monitoring of immunosuppressant drugs (ISD). However, for this technology to become widely adopted, the methodology needs to be standardized globally, including addressing bottlenecks both at the pre-analytical stage of sample preparation, and within the process itself. Here we take a look at the top four pitfalls to avoid when implementing LC-MS/MS for ISD monitoring.