Monoclonal antibodies specific for human polymorphic cell surface antigens. I. Evaluation of methodologies. Report on...

Five techniques, the direct and the antiglobulin enhanced cytotoxicity assays, indirect immunofluorescence, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and the radioimmunoassay, were evaluated in a workshop to determine their utility in studies of the interactions of monoclonal antibodies with HLA antigens expressed on lymphocytes. Several well-defined antibodies, both cytotoxic and noncytotoxic, were tested against well-characterized human lymphoid cells. All the methods suffer from some deficiency. The enhanced cytotoxicity assay, however, is most useful as a routine screening tool because of its ease and simplicity; whereas, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is most useful when dissection of antigenic structure is sought because it yields information on the quantities of the antigenic determinants expressed on the cell surface without requiring radioactive reagents.