The analyte of interest may be biological or chemical in nature, and by way of example, only may include chemical moieties (toxins, metabolites, drugs and drug residues), peptides, proteins, cellular components, viruses, and combinations thereof. The analyte of interest may be in either a fluid or a supporting medium, such as a gel.
SOFIA has demonstrated its potential as a device with a wide range of applications. These include clinical applications, such as detecting diseases, discovering predispositions to pathologies, establishing a diagnosis and tracking the effectiveness of prescribed treatments, and nonclinical applications, such as preventing the entry of toxins and other pathogenic agents into products intended for human consumption:
* Clinical applications – SOFIA may be used to conduct both qualitative tests (either positive or negative results) to detect or identify bacteria or viruses, and quantitative tests (measuring substances) to detect or quantify biological constants or markers, which are substances produced by the body in the presence of, for example, an infectious disease (to allow determination of viral load, for instance, in AIDS therapy, or the level of toxicity in drugs of abuse detection).
* Nonclinical applications - As an immunoassay, SOFIA can potentially be used on a wider scale to monitor the quality of food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, or water, as well as general environmental parameters and agricultural products. The ability to detect and screen bacteria and toxins for a wide range of products is a growing and more complex requirement as may be evidenced by the increase incidence of food- and animal-borne diseases, such as E. coli, Salmonella, BSE, avian influenza, etc.