Effect of rabbit strain on activity level and cytotoxicity of serum complement. II. Comparison of five murine target...

Serum samples from about 10 males and 10 females from each of 15 genetically defined strains of rabbits and from one hybrid were tested as sources of complement for the microtiter lymphocytotoxicity test using as target cells lymph node cells from C3H/HeJ, B10/Sn, BALB/cJ, and DBA/2J strain mice. The lynph node cells were tested with appropriate H-2 alloantisera. Results indicated marked strain differences. Correlation analysis of these data with data using primarily aliquots from the same serum samples tested against lymph node cells from B10.A/Sn mice showed clearly that a genetically defined population of rabbits that provided serum of high quality for one of these test systems would in general work reasonably well in any one of the other four. The correlation coefficients in all possible combinations ranged from +0.49 to +0.92. Of the five strains tested, the results obtained from BALB/cJ appear to be the best predictors of the results in the other four strains (r values were +0.74, +0.57, "0.76, and +0.92). Studies are in progress to test rabbit serum complement samples against the more demanding tumor cells.