Antibody responses against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 11 strains of inbred mice: novel monoclonal antibody specificities generated by fusions, using spleens from BALB.B10 and CBA/J mice.

Eleven strains of inbred mice were immunized with a culture filtrate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv, and the quality of the antibody responses was determined by immunoblotting. The quantity of mycobacterial antigen used for each immunization ranged from 6 to 750 micrograms per inoculum. The culture filtrate of M. tuberculosis was separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and electrotransferred to nitrocellulose filters. Immunoblotting results were obtained with serum from the following 11 strains of immunized mice: C57BL/6J, BALB/cJ, BALB.B10, C3H.OH, A.CA/Sn, CBA/J, DBA/1J, DBA/2J, C3H/HeJ, B10.A/SgSn, and B10.D2/nSn. Mice were tested individually, and results from each mouse were compared after each immunization. It was found that sera from individual mice within the same strain differed only slightly in their immune response patterns. In contrast, major differences were seen when the reactivities of sera from different strains were compared. Hybridomas were obtained from cell fusions by using spleen cells from BALB.B10 and CBA/J mice. Twelve monoclonal antibodies were raised, which identified epitopes on molecules with different electrophoretic mobilities than those already described by other investigators. The monoclonal antibodies were characterized by immunoblotting with respect to their reactivities with culture filtrates from M. tuberculosis and six other mycobacterial species. One of the monoclonal antibodies (HBT-10) identified an epitope that was present in M. tuberculosis H37Rv but not in Mycobacterium bovis BCG.