The Early Development of Cardiac Troponin I Assays: A Historical Perspective on Biomarker Specificity

This review by Allan Jaffe traces the evolution of cardiac troponin I assays from early development through the pursuit of cardiac-specific isoforms, highlighting the engineering challenges of antibody selection, epitope mapping, and cross-reactivity elimination that shaped modern immunoassay design. It provides essential historical context for understanding why contemporary hs-cTnI assays achieve superior cardiac specificity compared to troponin T.