Patent ID: 8603828

Claim:
A method for individually detecting a plurality of hemoglobin-containing analytes comprising HbA 1c and a hemoglobin variant, if present, in a single sample of blood cell lysate, said method comprising: (a) incubating said sample with a population of beads in a common mixture, said population comprising a subpopulation to detect HbA1c and one or more further subpopulations, each of which detects a hemoglobin variant, wherein: (i) each bead of said subpopulation to detect HbA1c has bonded thereto a classifier dye and each bead of said one or more subpopulations to detect a hemoglobin variant has bonded thereto a classifier dye where the classifier dyes are selected such that the classifier dyes, and thereby said subpopulations, are differentiable from each other by fluorescent emissions emitted by said classifier dyes upon excitation, and (ii) each bead of said subpopulation to detect HbA1c further has bonded thereto an antibody having selective binding affinity towards HbA1c and each bead of said one or more subpopulations to detect a hemoglobin variant has bonded thereto a monoclonal antibody that has selective binding affinity towards the variant and the glycated form of the variant to cause each analyte to bind to the different bead subpopulation through the antibody bonded to said subpopulations, wherein: one subpopulation of the one or more further subpopulations detects HbC, if present in the sample, and has bonded thereto a monoclonal antibody having selective binding affinity towards HbC and glycated HbC; or one subpopulation of the one or more further subpopulations detects HbS, if present in the sample, and has bonded thereto a monoclonal antibody having selective binding affinity towards HbS and glycated HbS; (b) with said analytes bound to the beads of said subpopulations, incubating said population with a labeled binding member that binds to all of said analytes, thereby labeling said analytes thus bound; and (c) detecting the labeled binding member that binds to all of said analytes and detecting classifier dyes from the subpopulations of beads and differentiating the labels of the subpopulations by fluorescent emissions, thereby individually detecting HbA1 c and if present, the hemoglobin variant.