ADLM 2026, the Annual Meeting of the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine, was held on July 26-30, 2026, in Anaheim, California. The meeting brought together clinical laboratory professionals, diagnostic developers, researchers, and in vitro diagnostic (IVD) companies to discuss advances across clinical chemistry, diagnostic immunology, microbiology, cancer diagnostics, cardiovascular disease, point-of-care testing, automation, data science, and other areas of laboratory medicine.
Antibodies remained highly relevant across the conference as critical raw materials for many diagnostic assays. Presentations covered monoclonal antibody development, antibody-pair selection, antigen and autoantibody detection, therapeutic drug monitoring, automated immunoassays, and the stability and standardization of diagnostic reagents.
Optimizing antibody-based immunoassay performance: presentations addressed the importance of selecting antibodies based on assay performance in antibody-pair optimization, diagnostic monoclonal antibodies, immunoassay interference, and reagent stability.
Growth of recombinant antibodies as standardized IVD raw materials: recombinant monoclonal antibodies were discussed for infectious disease detection, quality measurement tools, and biomarker assays.
Continued innovation in infectious disease diagnostics: HIV, HCV, dengue, RSV, tuberculosis, syphilis, and other infectious diseases were featured, including antigen detection, Ag/Ab combination testing, serology, and point-of-care approaches.
Expansion of autoimmune and antibody-based serology: ANA, anti-dsDNA, ANCA, anti-GBM, anti-Ro52/Ro60, anti-cardiolipin, anti-β2 glycoprotein I, and other autoantibodies were investigated using increasingly automated and multiplexed platforms.
Higher-sensitivity detection of emerging biomarkers: GFAP, neurofilament light chain, phosphorylated tau, cardiac troponin, and other biomarkers demonstrated the expanding role of immunoassays in neurological, cardiovascular, and other disease areas.
Automation and multiplexing continue to reshape diagnostic workflows: fully automated chemiluminescent assays, multiplex microarrays, automated immunofluorescence, and high-throughput testing platforms reflected efforts to increase throughput and standardize laboratory workflows.
Therapeutic drug and anti-drug antibody monitoring is expanding: assays for infliximab, adalimumab, guselkumab, ustekinumab, vedolizumab, and anti-drug antibodies highlighted the role of laboratory testing in monitoring biologic therapies.
Several presentations at ADLM 2026 focused on the antibody-based recognition components of diagnostic assays.
Topics included novel monoclonal antibodies for detecting glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), a protein associated with astrocytes and brain injury; development of p-Tau217-specific monoclonal antibodies, which target a modified form of tau protein studied as a biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease; optimization of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) antibody pairs; and investigation of how the structural and performance stability of diagnostic monoclonal antibodies changes over time.
The focus on antibody pairs is particularly relevant for sandwich immunoassays, diagnostic tests that use two antibodies to capture and detect the same target. In these assays, the capture antibody binds the target and holds it in place, while the detection antibody binds another site on the target to generate a measurable signal. The two antibodies must recognize compatible epitopes, or specific regions of the target molecule, while maintaining sufficient binding strength, specificity, signal, and low background under the conditions of the final assay. An antibody that performs well on its own does not necessarily make an effective diagnostic pair.
This makes it important to evaluate multiple recombinant antibody candidates in parallel before selecting a final pair. Once suitable antibodies are identified, recombinant production can provide consistent, sequence-defined antibody material as an assay moves toward validation and manufacturing.
Unlike antibodies sourced directly from animals or other biological materials, recombinant antibodies are defined by their heavy- and light-chain sequences, and can be reproduced from those sequences. This provides greater control over the identity and consistency of the reagent and reduces dependence on repeated animal immunization or the original biological source.
This is particularly valuable for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) development, where an antibody may need to remain consistent throughout assay optimization, validation, and eventual manufacturing. As development progresses, researchers must consider more than whether an antibody binds its target. Factors such as purity, aggregation, binding activity, stability, and lot-to-lot consistency can all affect assay performance.
The broader takeaway is that recombinant production can help turn an antibody from a promising research reagent into a well-defined, reproducible component of a diagnostic assay. Establishing a reliable recombinant supply early can also make it easier to compare candidates and maintain consistency as an assay moves toward validation and scale-up.
Infectious disease testing represented one of the clearest applications of antibody-based diagnostics at ADLM 2026.
In some assays, antibodies are used to detect pathogen-derived antigens. HIV p24, for example, is a viral protein that can be detected during infection, while other assays target antigens such as HCV core antigen or dengue NS1. In other tests, antibodies are used to detect the patient's immune response by identifying antibodies the body has produced against the pathogen. Some diagnostic formats combine both approaches, such as HIV antigen/antibody screening assays.
These different strategies place different demands on the antibody reagents. Researchers must consider the target concentration, sample matrix (the biological material being tested, such as blood or serum), required analytical sensitivity, and the detection technology used by the assay.
Point-of-care testing introduces more factors, since compared with centralized laboratory testing, point-of-care assays often work with smaller sample volumes and faster workflows while using different detection technologies. Antibodies thus need to maintain reliable performance under conditions that may be very different from those used during initial laboratory screening.
Many autoimmune tests rely on antibodies that recognize specific self-antigens. For example, antinuclear antibody (ANA) testing can identify antibodies that react with components of the cell nucleus, while more specific tests detect antibodies such as anti-dsDNA or anti-Ro52/Ro60 that can help support the diagnosis of particular autoimmune diseases.
An important message at ADLM 2026 was that detecting an autoantibody is only part of the diagnostic process. Studies comparing ANA testing platforms, manual and automated interpretation, assay cut-offs, and inter-assay agreement highlighted how the same patient sample can produce different results depending on how a test is designed and interpreted. An antibody may demonstrate strong target recognition, but its value depends on how consistently that recognition translates into a clinically meaningful result across assay formats, instruments, and laboratories.
Neurological and other disease biomarkers were discussed, particularly as researchers work to detect disease-associated proteins at increasingly low concentrations.
GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) was featured in multiple presentations. GFAP is a structural protein associated with astrocytes, cells that support neurons in the central nervous system, and can serve as a biomarker of neurological injury. Researchers explored new GFAP-specific monoclonal antibodies, high-throughput GFAP quantification, and measurement of GFAP alongside neurofilament light chain (NfL), another protein associated with neuronal damage. These biomarkers are being investigated across conditions including optic neuritis and stroke.
Phosphorylated tau (p-tau) was another protein of interest, including work on p-Tau217-specific monoclonal antibodies. Tau is involved in maintaining neuronal structure, while abnormal phosphorylation of tau is associated with neurodegenerative disease. Improving antibody specificity and assay performance could support more sensitive measurement of these biomarkers in blood-based testing.
Beyond neurology, immunoassays are also being developed for a wide range of biomarkers, including cardiac troponin, sFlt-1, PlGF, vitamin D, MMP-7, and inflammatory markers.
ADLM 2026 also highlighted the continued development of automated, multiplex, and point-of-care diagnostic platforms. Automated immunoassays can increase testing speed and standardization, while multiplex assays allow multiple biomarkers or targets to be measured from a single sample.
Multiplexing, however, introduces additional challenges for antibody development. Multiple antigen-antibody interactions must occur simultaneously without significant cross-reactivity, where an antibody binds an unintended target. Antibodies also need to perform consistently within the same assay conditions, making reagent compatibility increasingly important as developers move from single-analyte tests to multi-target diagnostic panels.
The conference also reflected interest in point-of-care (POC) testing, which brings diagnostics closer to the patient through portable instruments, biosensors, and alternative sample types such as saliva. These platforms can require antibodies to perform reliably with smaller sample volumes, faster workflows, and detection technologies that differ from those used in centralized laboratories.
Together, these approaches point toward diagnostic systems that are faster and more decentralized while still requiring highly specific and reproducible biological reagents.
Antibody technologies also appeared in therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), where laboratory testing is used to measure the concentration of a drug in a patient's blood and help assess treatment response.
This is relevant for biologic therapies such as infliximab, adalimumab, and guselkumab. In addition to measuring drug concentrations, some assays detect anti-drug antibodies (ADAs), which are immune responses generated against a therapeutic biologic that can alter its pharmacokinetics, reduce drug exposure, or affect treatment response.
TDM can help laboratories assess circulating drug concentrations and, in some settings, immune responses against a therapeutic antibody. The presence of anti-drug antibodies can affect pharmacokinetics and treatment response, creating a need for assays capable of distinguishing therapeutic antibodies, endogenous immunoglobulins, and anti-drug immune responses.
Antibodies are widely used as IVD raw materials in ELISA, chemiluminescent immunoassays, lateral flow assays, particle-based immunoassays, and other diagnostic platforms. Moving from an antibody candidate to a reliable diagnostic reagent requires screening, pair selection, assay-format testing, scale-up, and consistent production.
Biointron supports recombinant antibody production across this workflow. Small-scale parallel production with RushMab can provide multiple antibody candidates for experimental evaluation and pair screening, while larger-scale production can support assay optimization, analytical validation, pilot production, and continued antibody supply.
As diagnostic platforms become increasingly sensitive, automated, multiplexed, and decentralized, reliable antibody raw materials will remain a fundamental component of IVD development.
Thank you to everyone who visited our booth at ADLM 2026 to learn about our services! We had a fantastic time chatting with you and how it can help you achieve antibody development. Our expert team would be happy to answer any follow-up questions. Feel free to email us at info@biointron.com or visit our website at www.biointron.com.
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