ViroStat is a primary manufacturer, supplying infectious disease reagents to researchers and rapid test manufacturers. It has just released a new set of monoclonal antibodies to lipoteichoic acid (LTA).
There are medical conditions where rapid detection of Gram-positive bacteria is critical. An example of this is sepsis where time is of the essence. Most Gram-positive bacteria possess a cell wall polymer of lipoteichoic acid (LTA), which can be shed from growing bacteria and is also present on the intact bacterium itself.
The new set of monoclonal antibodies to LTA can be used to detect both free LTA as well as cell-wall LTA of intact bacteria. The antibodies detect the LTA of many Gram -positive bacteria including Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, S. pyogenes, Bacillus cereus, B. subtilis, Enterococcus faecalis and Listeria species.
These new antibody pairs represent powerful tools for assay development for bacterial detection. The data sheet for these new antibodies is available on the ViroStat website.
