Table 1.

Current techniques and potential methods of endotoxin detection in clinical and pharmaceutical samples.

LAL/	Analyte	Technique	Principle/Key Elements	Method	Sample	Reference
Non-LAL
LAL	Endotoxin	Conventional/ Endotoxin-specific	Activation of pro-clotting enzyme in Limulus amebocyte lysate	Gel-clot	Plasma	Levin, J. [25]
				Chromogenic/Turbidimetric	Plasma	van Deventer, S.J. [15] Tamura, H. [16,17] Obayashi, T. [26] Inada, K. [28] Kambayashi, J. [33]
		LAL alternatives (Endotoxin-specific)	Recombinant Factor C	Fluorogenic	Non-clinical	Ding, J.L. [41]
			Recombinant coagulation enzymes	Chromogenic	Pharmaceutical Non-clinical	Mizumura, T. [42]
		Modified LAL	Endotoxin scattering photometry (ESP)	Light scattering by small particles	Plasma	Shimizu, T. [35]
			Engineered firefly luciferases with improved sensitivity	Chromogenic	Dialysate	Noda, K. [36]
			Target LPS capture with LPS binding peptide produced by phage-display	Chromogenic	Pharmaceutical Non-clinical	Suzuki, M.M. [37]
			Target LPS capture with phage-derived protein	Chromogenic/ Fluorogenic	Pharmaceutical Non-clinical	Grallert, H. [38]
			Endosafe PTS device with a disposable cartridge	Chromogenic	Nuclear medicine, Pharmaceutical	Maule, J. [40]
			Electrochemical LAL assay	Chromogenic	Dialysate	Takano, S. [52]
Non-LAL (Direct)	Endotoxin/	GC/MS	β-hydroxymyristic acid content of Lipid A	Gas chromatograph-Mass spectrometer	Serum (Rabbit)	Maitra, S.K. [46]
	Lipid A	Immunological techniques	Antiserum to J5 mutant of E.coli 0111:B4	ELISA	Milk	Mohammed, A.H. [48]
	Endotoxin		Target LPS capture with polymyxin probe	ELISA	Non-clinical	Inoue, K.Y. [49]
	LPS O-antigen		Antiserum to O-polysaccharides	Radioimmuno-assay	Non-clinical	Munford, R.S. [50]
	Endotoxin	Fluorescence spectroscopy	Fluorescence-labelled Endotoxin Neutralizing Protein (ENP)	Fluorescence polarization	Non-clinical	Sloyer, J. [51]
		Electro-chemistry-based	Electrochemical aptasensor	Signal amplification by enzymatic recycling	Non-clinical	Bai, L.J. [53]
Non-LAL (Indirect, Cell-based)	Endotoxin	NF-κB	Monocyte activation test	Cytokines production	Pharmaceutical	Hoffman, S. [54]
	Pyrogen	MAT	Toll-like receptor 4/MD-2/CD14	NFkB- reporter assay	Plasma (Rat)	Nishida, M. [56]
	Endotoxin activity	EAA	Human neutrophil-complement opsonized LPS-IgM complexes	Chemilumi-nescent emission	Whole blood	Marshall, J.C. [58]
Relevant analytes	Anti-endotoxin antibody	Immunological techniques	Anti-bacteroides lipopolysaccharide IgG	Inhibition ELISA	Serum	Allan, E. [63]
	LBP		Endotoxin-LBP-sCD14 complexes	ELISA	Serum	Opal, S.M. [64]