Monoclonal murine antibodies with specificity for tissue culture lines of human squamous-cell carcinoma of the lung.

Monoclonal antibodies directed against human melanoma and colon carcinoma cells were described essentially by the groups of L.L. Old and K.E. Hellström. Reports dealing with monoclonal antibodies reactive with human lung tumors are still rather rare. Therefore, we used a squamous cell carcinoma line of the lung as immunogen in Balb/c mice and fused the spleen cells of the immunized animals with the X63-AG8.653 mouse myeloma cell line. The clones producing antibodies reactive with squamous cell carcinomas of the lung in an indirect immunofluorescence assay were recloned, and a fine specificity analysis was performed with 44 cultured cell lines of different origin. The data indicated that most of the antigens recognized by these monoclonal antibodies seem to be of embryonic type because of their reactivities with some of the tested human embryonic cell lines. Radioimmunoprecipitation in combination with sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis is underway to characterize in more detail the antigens recognized by the antisquamous cell lung cancer monoclonal antibodies.