Bioassay Essentials for Statisticians

Statisticians working in an applied area need to have a basic understanding of the science in that area as well as the standard statistical approaches used for data analysis. Although a niche field, bioassay is a statistically interesting and challenging subject area with broad application in biopharmaceutical industry. In this talk, I’ll introduce (at a high level – because I am a statistician) some commonly used bioassays and assay formats, basic bioassay terminology, statistical considerations and statistical models used for bioassays. So expect to hear about ligand binding assays (ELISA) and 96 well plates, replication strategies, reference and test articles, similarity/parallelism, validation, independence, confounding, 4PL and mixed models. The intent is to foster communication and help statisticians to provide the best support to their scientific partners.