Antibody production and application for immunoassay development of environmental hormones: a review

Abstract

Environmental hormones, also called environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), are produced by various human activities and environment pollution, and they are composed of industrial chemicals and environmental pollutants. They play a harmful role in breaking the balance of normal physiological metabolism, causing serious diseases and disrupting reproductive development in wildlife and human beings by inhibiting or imitating the action of normal gonadal hormones. Strict controls of maximum residue levels to some environmental hormones in foodstuff have been set up by many countries. Traditional detection methods, due to their high accuracy and maturity, are used extensively, such as HPLC, HPLC–MS, and GC–MS. However, these methods are time consuming and require extraordinary skills of operators, and sometimes they cannot meet the requirements of field testing. Immunoassay has the advantages of high specificity, sensitivity, simplicity, convenience, and the ability to achieve high throughput, playing an irreplaceable role in the field of rapid detection. This review focuses on the antibody production and the development of immunoassays to detect environmental hormones in food and environment. Therefore, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are selected as examples to introduce a series of procedures for the detection of environmental hormones including antigen synthesis, antibody production, and antibody-based detection methods.[Figure not available: see fulltext.].