The Characterization of Monoclonal Antibodies Directed against Carbohydrate Epitopes by Immunochemical Means; The Importance of such Monoclonal Antibodies for the Recognition of Blood Group Antigens

Abstract

A number of monoclonal antibodies (MABs) raised against blood group active carbohydrate antigens have proved to be useful as blood grouping reagents [1]. The possibility to determine the fine specificity of these antibodies and the increasing knowledge about the importance of carbohycrate antigens as markers in cell differentiation and in carcinogenesis [2,3] have made many of these MABs even more important as diagnostic tools in immuno-histology and immuno-pathology. Since a blood group active carbohydrate antigen may have different chain structures and can be attached to lipids or polypeptides the presentation of the antigen may differ in different tissues even if the immuno-dominant structure is the same [4,5]. On the other hand, cell surface antigens which seemingly are identical might show fine qualitative differences when studied with specific reagents [6]. Thus it might be possible that weak ABO variants which can be demonstrated on red cells of rare individuals may contain epitopes which differ also qualitatively from those of ‘standard’ red cell phenotypes.