The flow cytometry-based antibody capture beads should be both more sensitive and require less sample than a standard ELISA approach. At least, that has been my experience with the cytokine capture beads. I haven't used the antibody capture beads.

Hey Pooja,

from my personal experiences, you can already get pretty good results using ELISA as default measure for antibody titers. And personally I would suggest you to keep on working with ELISA as it is in literature still the most commonly used measurement for antibodies. In my opinion, FACS is always a bit time consuming, although (what Ben Roediger already mentioned) it provides maybe sligtly more sensitive results. But as a control experiment to verify your ELISA or FACS results, I would suggest you another technique which is a turbidimetric assay (giving antiserum to you serum and look for the change in turbidity cause of precipitations). I hope that could help you a bit and good success with your experiments.

It depend on your sample limitation and how much you can spend on experiments. I am using both techniques to measured cytokine i can say if you wish to measure more than one markers Flow cytometry best using Capture bead (e.g. CBA for BD system). if you want to measure only one marker then ELISA. At the last its also depend on the sensitivity of a experiments it depend on different markers (e.g. ELISA more sensitive for some cytokine but less for other one). So you need to decide a assay according to your condition.

I should have added that the CBA is both more time consuming and more expensive than ELISA, and probably not worth the expense if the antibody concentration in your samples is above the limit of detection of the ELISA.

Want you to determine total IgG and IgM? then a nephelometric assay is sufficient (BNII  of Siemens for exemple) or do you want determine IgG and IgM specific for a given virus or bacteria? than ELISA is interesting; see Enzygnost  of Siemens

The aim of my master thesis was to determine the binding of  IgG and IgM antibodies present in the Multiple Sclerosis CSF  and plasma to oligdendrocyte and neuronal cell lines. For this experiment, I had to use 225 plasma  and 90 controls along with 186 CSF and 90 controls. Hence, I was contemplating which method was better FACS or ELISA :)

Thanks u very very much for helping out.I can use these answers in my master thesis defense :) :)

Do you have an ELISA kit for the detection of these antibodies or will you have to prepare yourself your test from commercial antigens?

If you work with  microplates you can decrease the volume of CSF to use and carry a big number of analyzes what seems to be your case

could you please suggest me some ELISA kit to detect the levels of IgM and IgG in mice plasma?

Thanks