Affiliations: [a] Department of Medicine, Program of Geographic Medicine, Miriam Hospital, Brown University International Health Institute, Providence, Rhode Island, USA | [b] Nanjing Medical College, People's Republic of China | [c] Department of Medicine, Roger Williams General Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Note: [] Address requests for reprints to: Thomas F. Kresina, Ph.D., Program of Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Miriam Hospital, 164 Summit Avenue, Providence, RI 02906, USA. A version of this paper was presented at the First International Conference on Human Antibodies and Hybridomas, Orlando, FL, USA, 18–20 April 1990. Supported in part by NIH grant AI 25167 and AI 26926. The present study involves human subjects from the People's Republic of China. This protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Boards of both the Miriam Hospital and Nanjing Medical College, using guidelines for human experimentation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Abstract: A series of human monoclonal antibodies were generated using splenocytes from a Chinese patient with chronic schistosomiasis who had undergone splenectomy as part of a portacaval decompression operation. Splenocytes were transformed in bulk culture by Epstein Barr virus and transformants fused with the HMMA 2.11 TG/O cell line. Twenty individual IgG antiworm and egg antibody-producing hybridomas were generated and screened for antigen reactivity by Western blot and for suppression of antigen-induced blastogenesis of murine splenocytes from Schistosoma japonicum-infected animals. Only one IgG clone significantly suppressed (56% P<0.05) soluble egg antigen (SEA)-induced blastogenesis. This human monoclonal antibody bound a 50 kD carbohydrate antigen on Western blot analysis, binding both the adult worm and egg antigens of this parasite. The non-regulatory monoclonal antibodies bound this same molecule present in adult worms but not the corresponding molecule in a preparation of soluble eggs. Thus, specific immunoregulatory epitopes can be identified by human monoclonal antibodies generated from patients with chronic disease.
Keywords: human monoclonal antibody, schistosomiasis japonica, Schistosoma japonicum, immunoregulation
