Identification of a cell surface protein, p97, in human melanomas and certain other neoplasms.

BALB/c mice were immunized with a human melanoma cell line, SK-MEL 28, and their spleen cells were fused with mouse NS-1 myeloma cells. Hybrid cells were tested in an indirect 125I-labeled protein A assay for production of antibodies that bound to surface antigens of SK-MEL 28 melanoma cells but not to autologous skin fibroblasts. One hybridoma, designated 4.1, had the required specificity. It was cloned and grown in mice as an ascites tumor. The monoclonal IgG1 antibody produced by the hybridoma was purified from the ascites fluid and labeled with 125I. The labeled antibody bound, at significant levels, to approximately 90% of the melanomas tested and to approximately 55% of other tumor cells, but not to three B-lymphoblastoid cell lines or to cultivated fibroblasts from 15 donors. Immunoprecipitation and sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis were used to detect the target antigen in 125I-labeled cell membranes of both cultivated cells and tumor biopsy samples. A protein with a molecular weight of 97,000 was identified. This protein, designated p97, was present in both cultured cells and biopsy material from melanomas and certain other tumors, but it was not detected in eight different samples of normal adult epithelial or mesenchymal tissues obtained from five donors.