Microsampling is revolutionizing sample collection for preclinical and clinical research and diagnostics. It is enabling significant reductions in animal use and creating new possibilities for at-home, patient-centric sampling that will have a major impact on how clinical trials will be run in the future. A key factor to success is matching microsampling methods with bioanalytical techniques such as immunoassays that enable reliable, sensitive detection of analytes in small volumes of complex matrix.
Harnessing the power of cell and gene therapy involves a large range of analytical methods that can deliver robust results to support rapid data driven decision-making. One assay development team has used immunoassays to track a transgene IgG product. Their choice of immunoassay platform enabled them to generate high quality data that supported Design of Experiments to quickly optimize cell culture.
Cell and gene therapy promises to revolutionize medicine by correcting underlying genetic causes of disease or conferring new functions to cells to combat disease and has already seen spectacular successes in health care, ranging from curing rare eye diseases, to the treatment of sickle cell disease and a number of cancers. Immunoassays can be important analytical tools in cell and gene therapy and the careful choice of an immunoassay platform can improve productivity by boosting workflows, data quality and greatly reducing the consumption of precious samples, for example in detecting antibodies against lentivirus vectors that are commonly used in cell and gene therapy. 
Mammalian expression systems have driven the rise of biotherapeutics. Their ability to introduce proper protein folding, post-translational modifications, and product assembly means that they are currently used to produce almost all therapeutic antibodies to ensure correct structure and minimize the risk of immunogenicity. But the advent of smaller, simpler biotherapeutics means that prokaryote expression systems such Escherichia coli (E. coli) are playing a new role in antibody therapy. These bacteria can deliver high expression levels, with simpler bioprocessing at a lower cost together with an extensive molecular toolbox based on well-characterized genetics. This development is increasing the need for sensitive methods to monitor bioprocess development and manufacturing based on E. coli-based expression systems, including the sensitive analysis of host cell proteins. 
Obesity has become a devastating pandemic, with 108 million obese children and 604 million obese adults worldwide in 2015, and the problem is increasing (1). The result is an escalation in serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular disease, hypertension, dyslipidemia and several cancer forms, mainly gastrointestinal. Obesity is very difficult to treat through life style changes and surgery has become the most effective and long-lasting route to sustained weight loss, although it is only available to a small subset of individuals, and is both costly and risky. The search for more widely applicable treatment has driven the development of peptide-based pharmaceuticals that can meet key challenges of obesity, including control over satiety, blood sugar and LDL cholesterol levels. 
