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U.S. Patent No. 7,670,805, issued on March 2, 2010 to Immutopics, Inc. of San Clemente, CA, discloses a method of producing isolated antibodies useful for determining PTH levels in blood.

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is involved in the body’s regulation of blood calcium ion levels by releasing stored calcium when serum calcium levels decrease.  Serum PTH levels can be important to monitor for patients suffering from various conditions, including osteoporosis, but it is normally present at extremely low levels, and in the form of various fragments, making reliable measurements difficult.

According to the patent, the disclosed methods produce antibodies with an improved binding affinity to PTH at higher yields, thereby allowing more cost-effective and reliable assays of serum PTH levels.

 According to its website, Immutopics specializes in innovative assays for assessing bone health, including their “Human BioActive PTH (1-84) ELISA kit.”  The USPTO database lists three previous U.S. patents for Immutopics, two of which also deal with producing antibodies for PTH assays.