ESTA: a bioassay system for the determination of the potencies of hormones and antibodies which mimic their action.

A bioassay system named ESTA (eluted stain assay) has been developed to measure hormones and antibodies which mimic their action. It is derived from approaches used for cytochemical bioassays. Unlike the latter which use tissue segments or sections, ESTA is based upon uniform microcultures of target cells maintained in microtitre plates. Direct elution of the cytochemical stain from these microcultures into the wells of the microtitre plates permits rapid quantification with a microtitre plate reader. We describe ESTA systems for GH, prolactin, thyroid stimulators and human chorionic gonadotrophin which utilize the reduction of a tetrazolium salt to a formazan by intracellular dehydrogenase as the cytochemical system. These provide examples of ESTA systems in which the assay signal depends solely upon an increase in cell number in response to the hormone, or in which there is additional enzymic amplification.