A monoclonal antibody to human leukocyte common antigen, SHL-1, and its use for formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded...

The authors describe a newly characterized murine monoclonal antibody to the human leukocyte surface antigen, SHL-1. The antigen belongs to the leukocyte common antigen (LCA) family, and its molecular weight is about 180,000 daltons, which is similar to that of some previously characterized LCAs. The SHL-1 antigen is resistant to conventional tissue-fixation and embedding procedures. This antibody can therefore be used in the immunohistochemical staining of paraffin-embedded tissue sections. Wide screening with a sufficient number of both fresh and routinely processed paraffin-embedded tissues was done with indirect immunoperoxidase technique. With this procedure, SHL-1 labeled the majority of normal leukocytes and hematopoietic malignancies. Some B-cell malignancies were not stained with this antibody. The non-hematologic malignancies posing diagnostic problems of differentiation from lymphomas or leukemias were completely negative to SHL-1. The immunoreactivity to SHL-1 of samples from 24 leukemic patients and 15 human tumor cell lines was determined by the immunofluorescence method. Of 24 leukemic preparations, 23 were strongly reactive to this antibody. One case of B-cell leukemia did not react with SHL-1. No immunoreactivity was demonstrated in non-hematopoietic tumor cell lines. The overall reaction pattern of SHL-1 proved its usefulness in both diagnostic and research practice in hematological disorders. This antibody detected cell surface antigens of the T cell series more effectively than those of the B-cell series in terms of the positive number of cells and mean fluorescence intensity.