Clinical Chemistry Symposium Cassettes - ACS Publications

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Clinical Chemistry Symposium Cassettes Innovative Approaches tô Clinical Analytical Chemistry. Lab Professionals Series. Six cassettes. Playing time: 51/2 h. American Chemical Society, 1155 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 1980. $89.95 for the series, $13.50 for individual presentations.

Reviewed by Carl A. Burtis, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box X, Oak Ridge, Tenn. 37830 This set of cassette tapes, which includes printed copies of most of the figures, resulted from recording the symposium entitled "Innovative Approaches to Clinical Chemistry.'' This symposium, part of the 1980 Spring Meeting of the American Chemical Society, was sponsored by the Division of Analytical Chemistry and was organized by Robert Melville, FDA. It includes the Garvan Award address. The Garvan Award is given in recognition of distinguished service to chemistry by women chemists. The 1980 Garvan awardee, Helen Free of the Ames Division of Miles Laboratories, Inc., presents a thorough and interesting paper entitled "Contributions of Clinical Analytical Chemistry to the Quality of Life." In her address, Free summarizes the historical and current state of the art of the analyticaluse of paper strip chemistry for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of urine and blood for analytes of clinical interest. Although such technology has been automated, it is obvious from Free's presentation that two of the advantages of paper strip chemistry are its simplicity and ease of use. These advantages are of particular importance when one considers the technical and sociological problems involved in performing clinical analysis in Third World countries, a situation discussed in detail by Alfred Free in his presentation entitled "Contributions and Challenges of Global Analytical Chemistry." William Sunderman presents a general discussion on "Trends in Clinical Chemistry in Relation to Medicine." The content of the presentation consists mostly of Sunderman's pessimistic view that government regulation

and intervention have hindered and will continue to seriously hinder progress in the development of innovative approaches to clinical analyses—a point of view which, unfortunately, may be very accurate. The remaining four presentations in this series are more technical and include a description of innovative approaches that are currently being used in the laboratory or may be used in the future. Robert Carrico presents an interesting paper entitled "Colorimetric Immunoassays with Flavin Adenine Dinucleotide as the Label," a methodology which is termed a prosthetic-group-labeled immunoassay (PGLIA). This approach is one of the several new analytical alternatives to radioactively labeled immunoassays that are being developed in an attempt to bypass the problems involved with disposal of radioactive compounds and the organic solvents in which they are measured. Peter Kissinger discusses his successful pioneering efforts in combining HPLC with electrochemical detection and the widespread use of these combined techniques in* measuring tyrosine and tryptophan and their metabolites in body fluids and tissue homogenates. Martin Rubin's presentation, entitled "Localized Elemental Analysis by Coupled Back Scatter Electron Microscopy and X-Irradiation Analysis," is very informative. Several clinical examples are presented in which the technique was used to obtain elemental analysis at the subcellular level and where it provided medically useful information that was not previously available. The last presentation, "New Approaches to Fluorescence Measurements" by Gary Christian, considers the utility of combining a vidicon fluorometer and on-line data processing and statistical analysis to identify ahd fingerprint fluorescent compounds in mixtures. However, the applications presented are more environmental than clinical in nature. In summary, this was an interesting and informative series of tapes. Personally, I doubt that most clinical

chemists would be interested in the entire set of tapes; however, I would recommend any or all of them to interested individuals. Immobilized Enzymes in Analytical and Clinical Chemistry: Fundamentals and Applications (Vol. 56 in Chemical Analysis). P. W. Carr and L. D. Bowers, xvii + 460 pages. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10158. 1980. $45

Reviewed by George G. Guilbault, Department of Chemistry, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, La. 70122 This monograph covers the broad field of analytical and clinical use of immobilized enzyme systems. The first four chapters are introductory, with discussions of basic enzymology (structures, classification, nomenclature, isolation and purification, denaturation), enzyme kinetics (the single and non-Michaelis-Menten kinetics, effects of activation and inhibition, temperature, pH, buffer, kinetics of two enzyme systems), principles (techniques to visualize enzyme reactions, chemical and physical methods) and immobilization methodology (effects of immobilization on stability and kinetics, adsorption, entrapment, crosslinking and covalent techniques). Chapter 5 is devoted to an in-depth look at the theory and applications of enzyme electrodes, with special emphasis on glucose and urea electrodes. In chapter 6 the fundamentals of chemical reaction kinetics in flow systems are covered; this is followed by a consideration of immobilized enzyme reactions in chapter 7, and the analytical application of immobilized enzymes in chapter 8. A serious effort is made by the authors to introduce the novice to the area, and to bring the experienced worker up-to-date on all aspects of analytical use of immobilized enzymes— electrodes, thermometric measurements, reactions, etc. For this they are to be commended. They have done an excellent job. Unfortunately some areas that

ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 53, NO. 6, MAY 1981 • 747 A

Give your GC unsurpassed linearity and sensitivity

Books might be of interest to readers are not covered: a survey of the field of en­ zyme electrodes (instead of emphasis on glucose and urea); a discussion of automated instruments that use im­ mobilized enzymes; and commercial sources of immobilized enzymes. But this is only a minor criticism. The book is well written, and at $45, reasonably priced. I recommend it as a valuable reference book that will ap­ peal to all levels of readers.

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