PMID: 8999667Jul 1, 1996Paper

Immunochemical properties and specificity of monoclonal antibodies against N- and C-terminal sites of the recombinant protein of the nucleocapsid of hepatitis C virus (HCcAg)

Voprosy virusologii
O V MasalovaA A Kushch

Abstract

Highly affine murine monoclonal antibodies (MAB) to recombinant nucleocapsid (core) protein of hepatitis C virus (rHCcAg) expressed in E. coli were obtained. The MABs were analyzed by solid-phase enzyme immunoassay (EIA), immunodot, immunoblotting, and competitive immunochemical analysis. For estimating the epitope specificity of MAB, several immunoreactive fragments of different length were cloned from the HCcAg region overlapping 160 N-terminal amino acid (a. a.) residues. Use of these fragments and the competitive EIA demonstrated that MAB recognize 4 non-overlapping epitopes, 2 of which are localized in the 1-80 a. a. and 2 other in the 80-150 a. a. regions. A protocol of EIA for detecting HCcAg using MABs to two nonoverlapping HCcAg epitopes has been designed. The sensitivity of double-site sandwich is 1 ng/ml for the recombinant protein.

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