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Comparing assays via the resolution of molecular concentration

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The assessment of the performance of molecular assays would benefit from quantifying the resolution of molecular concentration — a new metric that we propose and evaluate here.

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Fig. 1: Resolution of molecular concentration.
Fig. 2: Comparison of the performance of three commercial ELISA tests for CRP.
Fig. 3: Comparison of the performance of four point-of-care assays for the monitoring of circulating concentrations of a therapeutic monoclonal antibody.
Fig. 4: Dependence of the RMC on the parameters of a linear calibration curve.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Tirlea and M. Sklar of the Stanford Statistics Group for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the Chan–Zuckerberg Biohub investigator program, the National Institutes of Health (NIH, OT2OD025342) and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University.

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B.D.W. and H.T.S. conceived the project. B.D.W. developed the model and analysed the data. B.D.W., M.E. and H.T.S. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to H. Tom Soh.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Biomedical Engineering thanks David Duffy and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wilson, B.D., Eisenstein, M. & Soh, H.T. Comparing assays via the resolution of molecular concentration. Nat. Biomed. Eng 6, 227–231 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00832-8

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