Patent ID: 7381567

Claim:
A bioaffinity assay using lanthanide ions or their chelates as labels and dissociative fluorescence enhancement as a tool for detection comprising the steps of a) mixing a sample comprising an analyte to be assayed with reactants of said assay to obtain an assay mixture; b) reacting said analyte with said reactants, wherein a bioaffinity reaction between said analyte and said reactants of said assay takes place, resulting in a reaction product wherein i) the analyte is attached to at least one reactant covalently or noncovalently labelled with a lanthanide or lanthanide chelate, or ii) an analyte analogue or other reactant, correlating in amount directly or inversely with the analyte, is directly labeled with the lanthanide, wherein the lanthanides of i) and ii) above are hereinafter referred to as label lanthanides, c) separating said reaction product obtained in step b), said reaction product comprising said label lanthanides defined above, from the unbound free labeled reactants, d) performing a dissociative fluorescence enhancement which consists essentially of adding an enhancement solution having a pH of from 2.0 to 2.8 to i) dissociate the label lanthanides from the chelates of the reaction product of step b) and ii) create a highly fluorescent lanthanide chelate with a β-diketone of said enhancement solution, said dissociative fluorescence enhancement being performed in a single step, and e) measuring the amount, directly or inversely correlating with the amount of analyte of the sample in step a) of the label lanthanides of step d) as β-diketone complexes by fluorometry, wherein said enhancement solution comprises a β-diketone of formula I wherein R 1 is an aryl, optionally mono- or multi-substituted, and R 2 is a straight or branched alkyl chain with 2 to 9 carbon atoms substituted with four or more fluorine atoms optionally mono- or multi-substituted with other substituents than fluorine.