Hands-on ELISA training at Universiti Malaya and UKM: Prima Nexus workshops, August to December 2016

From the Prima Nexus archive: a look back at August to December 2016.

BANGI, 21 December 2016: On 21 December 2016, Prima Nexus and Makmal Bioserasi co-organised a one-day, hands-on ELISA workshop at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in Bangi, the December session of the Prima Nexus Workshop Series 2016. In the months before, Prima Nexus had run hands-on ELISA workshops at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Universiti Malaya (UM), on 26 August, and on the UKM Kuala Lumpur campus on 26 September.

Universiti Malaya and UKM Kuala Lumpur

The August session ran over one morning at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Universiti Malaya, in a seminar room and in the institute's Fungal Biotechnology Lab. After a short introduction to ELISA, participants followed each stage of an assay at the bench: preparing reagents, standards and samples, incubation, plate washing, adding the substrate, a second incubation, adding the stop solution and measuring absorbance. A talk on multiplex immunoassays ran during the first incubation, and the session closed with data analysis.

On 26 September, as the September session of the Prima Nexus Discussion Series 2016, the workshop moved to the Toxicology Lab (Makmal Toksikologi) on the UKM Kuala Lumpur campus. Prima Nexus trainers demonstrated each step at the bench, some participants tried the pipetting themselves with a trainer's guidance, and twenty-two participants received a certificate of attendance.

The December session at UKM Bangi

Makmal Bioserasi, a laboratory on the UKM Bangi campus, hosted the December session from 8.30 am to 2.30 pm. Participants came from UKM laboratories and faculties, both in Bangi and at UKM in Kuala Lumpur. Prima Nexus trainers Surani Sukor and Nor Alia led the session with a cortisol ELISA kit: a short introduction to ELISA in a meeting room, then the assay step by step at the bench, from incubation and plate washing to adding the substrate and the stop solution and reading the absorbance. The time after lunch was set aside for data analysis.

Prima Nexus's part

Prima Nexus organised the August and September workshops, co-organised the December session with Makmal Bioserasi UKM, and provided the trainers for all three. On 17 October 2016 it also organised a seminar, The Power of Multiplex Solutions, at the Advanced Medical and Dental Institute (AMDI), Universiti Sains Malaysia. More photos are on the event pages for Universiti Malaya, UKM Kuala Lumpur and UKM Bangi. Researchers who need proteins measured in their samples can use the Prima Nexus ELISA and Luminex multiplex services.