Migration inhibition by an agarose microdroplet assay: monitoring of tumor-associated antigens on a simian virus 40-induced sarcoma.

Macrophage migration inhibition assays, with a direct agarose microdroplet method, were used to monitor TAA activity of preparations of SV-40-induced mKSA cells. These preparations included cell-free crude membranes, papain-solubilized and NP40 detergent-solubilized membrane extracts from mKSA tumor cells. The assay was extremely sensitive and could detect migration inhibition reactivity with all three types of antigenic preparations with concentrations as low at 250 ng protein/ml. The reactivities were quite reproducible from experiment to experiment using the same or different lots of these antigen preparations, and the reactivities were specific in that peritoneal exudate cells from BALB/c mice, immunized with antigenically unrelated but syngeneic plasmacytomas, were not inhibited by these antigens. The results demonstrated the usefulness of this assay in rapidly detecting small concentrations of partially purified TAA preparations by using small number of immune cells.