A monoclonal antibody with anti-Burkitt lymphoma specificity. I. Analysis of human haematopoietic and lymphoid cell lines.

38-13 is a hybridoma-produced monoclonal rat IgM which appears to define a Burkitt's lymphoma-associated antigen (BLA). In this paper, we described the reactivity of 38-13 with a panel of human haematopoietic and lymphoid cell lines. In indirect immunofluorescence (IF) assays, 15 of 26 Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) lines studied were clearly stained with 38-13 (from 13 to 100% positive cells) by microscope, with varying numbers of heavily labelled cells. In these positive cell lines, fluorescence-activated cell-sorter (FACS) analysis demonstrated that BLA was actually present on all the cells. Positive BL included Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genome-carrying lines and EBV-negative ones; thus, BLA is not related to the presence of EBV. Most of the 15 BL cells that reacted with 38-13 contained a typical t(8;14) translocation, but had variant translocations such as t(2;8) and t(8;22). The cells were derived from BL patients of different geographical origins and clinical features. Four BL lines were poorly stained and seven were negative with 38-13 in IF assays. The 32 EBV-positive lymphoblastoid cell-lines (LCL) studied were negative. In three line pairs, consisting of a tumor line and an LCL from the same patient, only the BL line was demonstrated to react with 38-13. A series of non-BL cells, including haematopoietic, lymphoid and solid tumor lines, all failed to react with 38-13. Various attempts to modulate the expression of BLA on BL cells were unsuccessful. However, it cannot be ruled out that BLA is actually a transient B-cell differentiation marker.