This study demonstrates that diseased brain tissue can be used to select in situ for antibodies directed against the causative agent of a disease, offering a potential approach for identifying relevant antibodies in chronic CNS or systemic inflammatory diseases of unknown cause.
May enable antibody discovery in idiopathic CNS diseases via diseased tissue; leaves open translation beyond this animal SSPE model.
In central nervous system (CNS) infectious and inflammatory diseases of known cause, oligoclonal bands represent antibody directed against the causative agent. To determine whether disease-relevant antibodies can be cloned from diseased brain, we prepared an antibody phage display library from the brain of a human with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a chronic encephalitis caused by measles virus, and selected the library against SSPE brain sections. Antibodies that were retrieved reacted strongly with measles virus cell extracts by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and were specific for the measles virus nucleocapsid protein. These antibodies immunostained cells in different SSPE brains but not in control brain. Our data provide the first demonstration that diseased brain can be used to select in situ for antibodies directed against the causative agent of disease and point to the potential usefulness of this approach in identifying relevant antibodies in chronic CNS or systemic inflammatory diseases of unknown cause.
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Owens et al. (2000) studied this question.
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