A monoclonal antibody against the surface of osteoblasts recognizes alkaline phosphatase isoenzymes in bone, liver, kidney, and intestine

Monoclonal antibodies against the surface of embryonic osteogenic cells have been used to characterize the osteoblastic lineage. One antibody, SB-1, reacts in frozen sections with a family of cells in bone, liver, kidney, and intestine which are identically stained by the histochemical substrate for alkaline phosphatase. In this report, biochemical and immunochemical evidence is presented to indicate that SB-1 is directed against an epitope on alkaline phosphatase which is shared by isoenzymes in a variety of chick tissues. In a solid-phase assay system, high dilutions (1:10(5] of ascites fluid were found to give significant binding of SB-1 to alkaline phosphatase extracted from chick limb or intestine. Partial purification of intestinal alkaline phosphatase on a Sepharose CL-6B column results in the co-elution of alkaline phosphatase enzyme activity and antibody-binding material; this indicates that SB-1 recognizes intestinal alkaline phosphatase rather than an impurity in the crude preparation. Furthermore, Western immunoblots of chick calvarial bone extract electrophoresed on a 5-20% SDS-polyacrylamide gel show that SB-1 reacts with a single 155 kD band which also is stained by the alkaline phosphatase histochemical substrate. In a similar set of experiments, SB-1 reacts with an intestinal alkaline phosphatase isoenzyme whose molecular weight is approximately 185 kD. From these studies, we conclude that SB-1 is specifically reactive with alkaline phosphatase isoenzymes present in bone, liver, kidney, cartilage, and intestine. The reactive epitope is stable to SDS denaturation, not associated with the active site of the enzyme, and dependent on disulfide bonds which impart secondary structure to the protein.