Detection of high CD44 expression in oral cancers using the novel monoclonal antibody, CMab-5.

CD44 is a transmembrane glycoprotein that regulates a variety of genes related to cell-adhesion, migration, proliferation, differentiation, and survival. A large number of alternative splicing isoforms of CD44, containing various combinations of alternative exons, have been reported. CD44 standard (CD44s), which lacks variant exons, is widely expressed on the surface of most tissues and all hematopoietic cells. In contrast, CD44 variant isoforms show tissue-specific expression patterns and have been extensively studied as both prognostic markers and therapeutic targets in cancer and other diseases. In this study, we immunized mice with CHO-K1 cell lines overexpressing CD44v3-10 to obtain novel anti-CD44 mAbs. One of the clones, CMab-5 (IgG, kappa), recognized both CD44s and CD44v3-10. CMab-5 also reacted with oral cancer cells such as Ca9-22, HO-1-u-1, SAS, HSC-2, HSC-3, and HSC-4 using flow cytometry. Moreover, immunohistochemical analysis revealed that CMab-5 detected 166/182 (91.2%) of oral cancers. These results suggest that the CMab-5 antibody may be useful for investigating the expression and function of CD44 in various cancers.