Preparation and antigenic properties of digitoxin-bovine serum albumin conjugates linked at the digitoxose C-3' and C-3" positions.

In order to obtain specific antisera to digitoxin, four new types of hapten-bovine serum albumin (BSA) conjugates were synthesized from digitoxin. The haptens were linked to the carrier protein through hemisuccinate and hemisuccinylglycine bridges at the C-3' and C-3" positions in the digitoxose chain. The antisera were prepared by immunizing rabbits with each digitoxin-BSA conjugate and the properties of the antisera were investigated by RIA with 3H-labeled digitoxin. Among these antisera, the antiserum raised against digitoxin 3'-hemisuccinate-BSA conjugate possessed high specificity for digitoxin, exhibiting only minor cross-reactions with digitoxigenin bisdigitoxoside (4.0%), dihydrodigitoxin (2.8%), digoxin (2.4%), digitoxigenin monodigitoxoside (0.23%) and digitoxigenin (< 0.05%).