Antibody binding to membrane of cultured melanoma cells by sera of melanoma patients.

One hundred and nine sera from 75 patients with malignant melanoma and 69 sera from as many healthy donors were assayed by isotopic antiglobulin technique (IAT) on 2 melanoma cell lines. The same picture of reactivity was observed with patients' and healthy donors' sera, and in both groups 35% of the cases were high responders on 1 line and 21% on the other one. The specificity of the reactions was analyzed by absorption experiments using 12 melanoma sera selected for their high binding activity. Pools of human erythrocytes or leukocytes did not remove, except in 1 case respectively, the activity of the sera, suggesting that it was not directed against alloantigens. Quantitative absorption experiments were done with the 2 melanoma lines and with 1 colon carcinoma line. The results, evaluated on the basis of absorption capacity per cell, indicate that the 2 melanoma lines had a similar amount of shared antigens, whereas the colon line was also effective in absorbing out the serum activity, but less frequently and less efficiently. Further experiments performed to analyze the influence of culturing the target cells in presence of fetal bovine serum (FBS), showed that the activity of sera was removed, at various degrees for different sera, by absorption with free FBS, with FBS coupled to Sepharose 4B, and with normal leukocytes cultured overnight with 10% FBS. The same positive melanoma sera became negative when assayed on the same melanoma line cultured in gamma-globulin-depleted human AB serum. In conclusion, in our experimental conditions, the activity of melanoma sera seems mostly directed against components of FBS absorbed on cell membrane during culturing.