ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Minerva Biotecnologica 1998 June;10(2):65-70

Copyright © 1998 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Mouse monoclonal antibodies against outer membrane proteins of a vaccine strain of Neisseria meningitidis B:4:P1.15

Cruz S. ¹, Musacchio A. ², Fernandez-de-Cossio Maria E. ¹, Ohlin M. ³, Nazabal C. ², Freyre F. ¹, Borrebaeck C. A. K. ¹, Gavilondo J. V. ³

¹ Division of Immunotechnology and Diagnosis, Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, La Habana, Cuba; ² Division of Vaccines, Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, La Habana, Cuba; ³ Department of Immunotechnology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Background. Neisseria menin­git­i­dis (Nm) is a Gram neg­a­tive dip­lo­coc­cus caus­ing bac­te­ri­al men­in­gi­tis and ful­mi­nant sep­ti­ce­mia. In ­order to ­allow effi­cient char­ac­ter­iza­tion of infect­ing ­strains, anti­body ­reagents for use as ana­lyt­i­cal ­tools ­have prov­en to be inval­u­able ­tools. Similarly, anti­bod­ies ­against rel­e­vant bac­te­ri­al anti­gens may ­guide in the selec­tion of com­po­nents to be includ­ed in devel­op­ing vac­cine strat­e­gies.
Methods. We ­have ­thus devel­oped ­mouse mono­clo­nal anti­bod­ies spe­cif­ic for ­class 1, 3 and 5 anti­gens ­expressed by the B:4:P1.15 iso­late CU385/83, ­also ­being ­used in a recent­ly devel­oped pro­tec­tive vac­cine. In par­tic­u­lar, two anti­bod­ies CB-Nm.1 and CB-Nm.2 rec­og­nize epi­topes part­ly over­lap­ping the sub­ser­o­type (­class 1 anti­gen) and ser­o­type (­class 3 anti­gen) spec­i­fic­ities detect­ed by the pre­vi­ous­ly ­defined anti­bod­ies C6 and 15-1-P4 respec­tive­ly, ­were eval­u­at­ed.
Results. As ­judged by ­strain rec­og­ni­tion, the abso­lute require­ment for bind­ing dif­fers ­between ­both the ­class 1- spe­cif­ic and ­class 3 spe­cif­ic anti­bod­ies sug­gest­ing the impor­tance of ­using mul­ti­ple anti­bod­ies ­when eval­u­at­ing sub­ser­o­type/ser­o­type char­ac­ter­is­tics of clin­i­cal iso­lates of Nm by ser­o­log­i­cal meth­ods.
Conclusions. Furthermore, the devel­op­ment of anti­bod­ies cross­reac­tive ­with sub­ser­o­type /ser­o­type anti­gens may part­ly ­explain the abil­ity of out­er mem­brane pro­tein vac­cine to ­induce pro­tec­tive activ­ity ­against ­strains con­sid­ered as car­ry­ing dif­fer­ent ­class 1 and 3 anti­gens, as deter­mined by avail­able (sub)ser­o­typ­ing ­reagents.