Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus has acquired a fully automated ultrasensitive analyzer that will allow detection of biomarkers in a more precise way. It is located in the Laboratory of http://en.vhir.org/web_vhir/portal1/grup-equip.asp?t=neuroimmunologia-clinica&s=recerca&contentid=186888 Clinical Neuroimmunology of the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) but its use is not restricted only to the field of multiple sclerosis or other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ELA), but can be used by any researcher who wants to perform protein measurement studies in a precise way in biological samples of healthy subjects or patients with a wide range of pathological conditions: Infectious diseases, cardiology, oncology patients, among others.The first beneficiaries will be patients with multiple sclerosis that are treated at the https://www.cem-cat.org/en Multiple Sclerosis Center of Catalonia (Cemcat), located on the Vall d'Hebron Campus, a benchmark in the investigation, diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis at the level worldwide. body SIMOA HD-1, the technology of the future body Achieving such a high level of accuracy is possible by using state-of-the-art technology, in this case the SIMOA HD-1 technology, which allows detecting proteins with a sensitivity up to 1,000 times higher than the traditional immunological tests used up to now for the quantification of proteins such as ELISA. SIMOA is a digital version of the ELISA technique that allows you to accurately measure and with high sensitivity small changes in the concentration of molecules. This advantage allows the detection of physiological levels of biomarkers in the blood, such as those found in healthy people, or changes in the concentration of biomarkers depending on the activity of the disease, such as outbreaks in patients with multiple sclerosis or number of inflammatory lesions detected in a brain magnetic resonance. body Among the multiple advantages of this new technology to quantify with high precision and definition the concentration of proteins from biological samples include the total automation of the process, the fact of being able to work with lower volume samples and high sensitivity to detect in blood brain proteins. body The complete automation of the process comprises from the dilution of the samples, the washing steps and the incubations until the analysis of the results. This automation results in obtaining more consistent results, minimizing the variability observed with the use of manual processes. The human factor is eliminated. body Another advantage of the new quantification is the use of smaller volumes of sample compared to other techniques. An important aspect, mainly in studies of biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid in which the sample volume is limited. body The high sensitivity of SIMOA HD-1 will allow the detection of brain proteins in the blood, such as the neurofilaments that until now, precisely because of their low concentration in blood, could only be measured in the cerebrospinal fluid of people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Therefore, from now on monitoring studies of the clinical evolution of patients with MS, as well as studies of response to the different pharmacological treatments may be carried out, by serial quantification of biomarkers from blood extractions, without need to practice more invasive explorations, such as lumbar puncture to obtain cerebrospinal fluid. Its ability to detect high-sensitivity proteins will allow biomarkers to study more precisely.