© 2018 MEDIWISS ANALYTIC GmbH
AllergyScreen® and AlleisaScreen® are two test systems to detect allergen-specific IgE in human serum/plasma. Customers can be provided with the necessary test strips and the corresponding hard- and software (scanner, testing equipment).

The AllergyScreen® / AlleisaScreen® testing systems

Changing the
testing paradigm

Allergy diagnostics and the identification of a sensitization to allergens is an interdisciplinary challenge that incorporates knowledge gained through medical science, biochemistry and biology.

Long years of experience and work done with single test systems in allergology labs have shown that only a few key allergens are responsible for the patients’ disorders. And so, a question emerged: Why not collect all these key allergens and combine them on one test strip?

Development of the
AllergyScreen®/AlleisaScreen® test kit

MEDIWISS Analytic has vast experience in the extraction of allergens from raw material and extensive know-how of western blot protein analysis. This led to the idea of binding high quality, self-extracted, lyophilised allergens to a nitrocellulose membrane with the help of a contact plot printer.

The required anti-human IgE detector antibody and staining solution for the visualization of the specific IgE-allergen reaction were available and well known. It was only necessary to develop a plastic trough in which the test membranes could be glued. This resulted in a ready-to-use test for the determination of allergen-specific IgE in human serum/plasma.

The original contact plot printer used pencils filled with natural crude allergen extracts. New sophisticated equipment was developed featuring up to (at that time) 21 micro dispensing pumps which can be individually programmed according to variable and individual parameters with minimal divergence. Today’s systems even have 10 additional pumps and can realize our AlleisaScreen® with up to 30 allergen lines at a time.

Supportive hardware and software systems were also developed, beginning with a camera that took a photo of the test strips and allowed a semi-quantitative analysis of the results and later for a scanner that scans the test strips and gives high resolution pictures and more precise results.

AllergyScreen® / AlleisaScreen® test kit

AlleisaScreen®60 panels

With the initial AllergyScreen® test kit and the corresponding hardware, up to 20 allergen lines could be measured per test strip. The demand for more allergen lines on a single test strip led to AlleisaScreen®, a bigger immunoblot with a maximum capability of up to 60 allergen lines on two test strips in double trough. This allows the testing of all key allergens in one determination. The fact that these new immunoblot required a higher camera resolution resulted in the development of a new analysis system, the Improvio scanner family.

What started as a simple semi-qualitative visual test strip has been developed into a highly innovative, semi-quantitative nitrocellulose test system for the determination of allergen-specific IgE, in human serum/plasma with high resolution scanner systems.