Agarose beads as matrices for proteins in cytophotometric investigations of immunohistoperoxidase procedures;.

Quantitative aspects of direct immunohistoperoxidase procedures were studied in a model system consisting of agarose beads to which antigens or antibodies had been coupled. It could be proven that the final amount of reaction product resulting from the histoperoxidase reaction with 3,3-diaminobenzidine-tetra HCl in a bead was linearly related to the volume of the beads and to the staining time. This implies that protein-coupled agarose beads are a suitable model for the study of stoichiometric aspects of immunologic reactions in immunohistochemistry as well as in general immunologic methods when peroxidase is used as the protein marker.