BD, 557008, BD Pharmingen™ Recombinant Rat IL-6

Preparation And Storage: Preparation And Storage Store product at -80°C prior to use or for long term storage of stock solutions. Rapidly thaw and quick-spin product prior to use. Avoid multiple freeze-thaws of product. This preparation contains no preservatives, thus it should be handled under aseptic conditions.
Recommended Assay Procedures: Recommended Assay Procedures Upon initial thawing, recombinant rat IL-6 (Cat. No. 557008) should be aliquoted into polypropylene microtubes and frozen at -80°C for future use. Alternatively, the product can be diluted in sterile neutral buffer containing not less than 0.5 –  1.0 mg/mL carrier protein, such as human or bovine serum albumin, aliquoted and stored at -80°C. Failure to add carrier protein or store at the indicated temperatures may result in a loss of activity.  Carrier proteins should be pre-screened for possible effects in an appropriate experimental system. Carrier proteins may have an undesired influence on experimental results due to toxicity, high endotoxin levels or possible blocking activity. ELISA Standard: Rat IL-6 is useful as a quantitative standard for measuring rat IL-6 protein levels in a IL-6 specific sandwich ELISA, with the purified C3-4 antibody (Cat. No. 550644) as a capture antibody and the biotinylated G307-2 antibody (Cat. No. 550642) as the detection antibody.  This ELISA pair is recommended primarily for measuring cytokine from experimental cell culture systems, not for assay of serum or plasma samples.  For measuring rat IL-6 in serum or plasma, the BD OptEIA™ Rat IL-6 Set (Cat. No. 550319) is specially formulated and recommended. Bioassay: Investigators are advised that the Bioassay application is not routinely tested for this material and are highly encouraged to both titrate this material and include appropriate controls in relevant experiments.  An activity range of 1.0 - 6.6 x 10^7 units/mg, encompassing an ED50= 0.15 - 1.0 ng/mL, has previously been reported using NFS-60 indicator cells for proliferation, with a unit defined as the amount of material needed to stimulate a half-maximal response at cytokine saturation.