Science and Research

Validation of antibody reagents for mucin analysis in chronic inflammatory airway diseases

In chronic inflammatory airway diseases, mucins display disease-related alterations in quantity, composition and glycosylation. This opens the possibility to diagnose and monitor inflammatory airway disorders and their exacerbation based on mucin properties. For such an approach to be reasonably versatile and diagnostically meaningful, the mucin of interest must be captured in a reliable, patient-independent way. To identify appropriate mucin-specific reagents, we tested anti-mucin antibodies on mucin-content-standardized, human bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples in immunoblot assays. All commercially available monoclonal antibodies against the major airway mucin MUC5AC were screened, except for those with known specificity for carbohydrates, as glycosylation patterns are not mucin-specific. Our results indicated considerable inter-patient and inter-antibody variability in mucin recognition for all antibodies and samples tested. The best results in terms of signal strength and reproducibility were obtained with antibodies Mg-31, O.N.457 and 45M1. Additional epitope mapping experiments revealed that only one of the antibodies with superior binding to MUC5AC recognized linear peptide epitopes on the protein backbone.

  • Krause, T.
  • Rockendorf, N.
  • Gaede, K. I.
  • Ramaker, K.
  • Sinnecker, H.
  • Frey, A.

Keywords

  • Antibodies, Monoclonal/*pharmacology
  • Antibody Specificity/*immunology
  • Asthma/metabolism
  • Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid/chemistry
  • Epitope Mapping
  • Epitopes/immunology
  • Humans
  • Mucin 5AC/*immunology
  • *Asthma
  • *Copd
  • *Muc5ac
  • *chronic inflammatory airway diseases
  • *mucin capturing
  • *mucin quantification
  • *mucus
Publication details
DOI: 10.1080/19420862.2016.1264551
Journal: mAbs
Pages: 333-341 
Number: 2
Work Type: Original
Location: ARCN
Disease Area: AA, COPD
Partner / Member: FZB
Access-Number: 27911216
See publication on PubMed

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