Chromatographic and electrophoretic analysis of an antigen in Hodgkin's disease tissue cultures.

An antigen in tissue cultures derived from Hodgkin's disease tumors was investigated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, column chromatography, and isotopic antibody techniques. Fourteen long-term, serially passaged monolayer cultures prepared from tumor nodules of Hodgkin's disease in the spleen were studied; 11 monolayers derived from normal adult spleen and human fetal spleen and thymus were used as controls. Cell-free medium from Hodgkin's disease and normal cultures were centrifuged, and the pellet fractions were sedimented in a discontinuous sucrose gradient, solubilized with dodium dodecyl sulfate, and labeled with radioiodine. Gel filtration and electrophoresis revealed a component in samples prepared from medium of Hodgkin's disease cultures that was not observed in medium from normal cultures. An antiserum made in rabbits against this component reacted by radioiodine-labeled antibody assay with an antigen on the surface on cells from Hodgkin's disease cultures that was present in very small amounts, or in a cryptic state, on normal cultured cells. This antigen, intimately associated with propagation of cells obtained from the tumor in vitro, was not demonstrable in noncultured Hodgkin's disease tissue...