A and B blood group-specific monoclonal antibodies. Production and evaluation as ABO-blood typing reagents

The Monoclonal Antibody (MoAb) technology has been successfully applied to develop reagents for human blood group classification. There is no production of this kind of reagents in Venezuela, and the local demand (blood banks and clinical laboratories) is mainly supplied with imported material. Considering this we decided to apply MoAb techniques to generate murine hybridomas secreting anti-A or anti-B specific MoAb. MoAb obtained were characterized and produced in enough quantity to perform validation studies as blood typing reagents. Out of 22 hybridomas that were initially selected, 11 were anti-A secretors and 11 were anti-B secretors. Four MoAb were further characterized: Au18Kt3F, MG3 (both IgM anti-A), SS4.5 (IgG1 anti-B) and BB2-3 (IgM anti-B). Conditions were also established for growing the hybridomas Au18Kt3F and BB2-3 in the bioreactors "miniPerm" and "Tecnomouse", allowing for scale-up production of these MoAb. Avidity and specificity were estimated for each one, and the results were comparable to those obtained from commercially available reagents, making feasible its use as blood typing reagents.