A Highly Sensitive Radioimmunoassay for Human Growth Hormone Using a Monoclonal Antibody

Biozzi-strain mice were immunized with a highly purified preparation of 20K variant of hGH. Spleen-cells were fused with SP2/0Ag14 myeloma cells. Clone productions were screened for specificity toward 20K and 22K hGH and for the affinity constant of antibody-antigen reaction. For the selected monoclonal antibody, Ka was 1.02.10(11) L/M using 22K hGH as both tracer and reference preparation. No cross reactivity was found with PRL and other pituitary hormones; hPL reactivity was 0.002 percent that of hGH. According to these antibody characteristics, a highly sensitive RIA system was developed and used for specific GH measurement in human serum. Using logit-log co-ordinates, the slope of the standard curve was -1.099 and the minimum detected dose was 0.5 uIU/ml. Excellent correlation (r = 0.9575) was found between assay data in this system and those of a conventional RIA method using specific polyclonal rabbit antiserum. The International Reference preparation (66/217) could adequately be used to calibrate the monoclonal antibody system since the in house internal 22K GH standard and international one were equally well recognized by the monoclonal antibody.