Synthesis of haptens and selective enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay of octachlorostyrene

A sensitive, competitive indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed for the detection of octachlorostyrene (OCS), a persistent and bioaccumulative toxicant. To achieve the most sensitive antibody, several haptens with different linkers that simulated the special structure of OCS were synthesized and conjugated to carrier proteins. Polyclonal rabbit antibodies against different immunizing antigens were obtained and screened against different coating antigens. Under the optimized conditions, this indirect ELISA shows a linear detection range from 1.4 to 86.3 ng/mL, with an IC50 value of 4.46 ng/mL and a limit of detections (LOD) of 0.1 ng/mL. Twelve kinds of compounds were tested for calculating cross-reactivities, and almost all of them showed little cross-reactivity (<5%). Water and sera samples spiked with OCS were analyzed by ELISA and the achieved recoveries were satisfied with a mean recovery of 92%. This immunoassay can be used as a rapid and convenient tool to monitoring OCS in environmental samples.