Production of monoclonal anti-glomerular basement membrane antibodies during autoimmune glomerulonephritis.

Monoclonal anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) antibodies were obtained by fusing spleen cells from Brown-Norway (BN) rats injected with mercuric chloride with IR 983 F, a nonsecreting rat myeloma cell line. These antibodies showed the same pattern of fixation on renal basement membranes by indirect immunofluorescence. One of them was developed. It reacted both in vivo and in vitro with GBM but failed to react with collagenase-digested GBM, laminin, and collagen IV. This monoclonal antibody which resembles the kidney acid eluate obtained from BN rats injected with mercuric chloride induced a weak and transient proteinuria when intravenously injected into normal BN rats.