Bring all reagents to room temperature before use. Wash Buffer - If crystals have formed in the concentrate, warm to room temperature and mix gently until the crystals have completely dissolved. Dilute 20 mL of Wash Buffer Concentrate into deionized or distilled water to prepare 500 mL of Wash Buffer. Standard - Reconstitute the Standard with 1.0 mL of Sample Diluent. This reconstitution 3 produces a stock solution of 10 ng/mL. Allow the standard to sit for a minimum of 15 minutes with gentle agitation prior to making serial dilutions. The undiluted standard serves as the high standard (10 ng/mL). The Sample Diluent serves as the zero standard (0 ng/mL). Detection Reagent A and B - Dilute to the working concentration specified on the vial label using Assay Diluent A and B (1:100), respectively.

Allow all reagents to reach room temperature. Arrange and label required number of strips.
1. Prepare all reagents, working standards and samples as directed in the previous sections.
2. Add 100 uL of Standard, Control, or sample* per well. Cover with the adhesive strip. Incubate for 2 hours at 37 °C.
3. Remove the liquid of each well, don’t wash.
4. Add 100 uL of Detection Reagent A to each well. Incubate for 1 hour at 37°C . Detection Reagent A may appear cloudy. Warm to room temperature and mix gently until solution appears uniform.
5. Aspirate each well and wash, repeating the process three times for a total of three washes. Wash by filling each well with Wash Buffer (350 uL) using a squirt bottle, multi-channel pipette, manifold dispenser or autowasher. Complete removal of liquid at each step is essential to good performance. After the last wash, remove any remaining Wash Buffer by aspirating or decanting. Invert the plate and blot it against clean paper towels.
6. Add 100 uL of Detection Reagent B to each well. Cover with a new adhesive strip.Incubate for 1 hours at 37 °C.
7. Repeat the aspiration/wash as in step
5. 8. Add 90 uL of Substrate Solution to each well. Incubate for 30 minutes at room temperature. Protect from light.
9. Add 50 uL of Stop Solution to each well. If color change does not appear uniform, gently tap the plate to ensure thorough mixing.
10. Determine the optical density of each well within 30 minutes, using a microplate reader set to 450 nm.
Important Note:1. The wash procedure is critical. Insufficient washing will result in poor precision and falsely elevated absorbance readings.
2. It is recommended that no more than 32 wells be used for each assay run if manual pipetting is used since pipetting of all standards, specimens and controls should be completed within 5 minutes. A full plate of 96 wells may be used if automated pipetting is available.
3. Duplication of all standards and specimens, although not required, is recommended.
4. When mixing or reconstituting protein solutions, always avoid foaming.
5. To avoid cross-contamination, change pipette tips between additions of each standard level, between sample additions, and between reagent additions. Also, use separate reservoirs for each reagent. 4
6. To ensure accurate results, proper adhesion of plate sealers during incubation steps is necessary.

Average the duplicate readings for each standard, control, and sample and subtract the average zero standard optical density. Create a standard curve by reducing the data using computer software capable of generating a four parameter logistic (4-PL) curve-fit. As an alternative, construct a standard curve by plotting the mean absorbance for each standard on the y-axis against the concentration on the x-axis and draw a best fit curve through the points on the graph. The data may be linearized by plotting the log of the MMP-9 concentrations versus the log of the O.D. and the best fit line can be determined by regression analysis. This procedure will produce an adequate but less precise fit of the data. If samples have been diluted, the concentration read from the standard curve must be multiplied by the dilution factor.