Human serum albumin, antigenic immunization

The antigens induce not only an immune response but equally react with the antibodies, which are caused to appear by the living organism. However, these two properties are different. Small organic molecules such as pesticides are not able of inducing a production of antibodies. In the other hand, the antigens will react if an adapted antibody is already present these small molecules are called the haptens. To generate the antibodies characteristic to a hapten, the latter must be attached by a covalent bond to transporter proteins (BSA or HSA bovine or human serum albumin), or to a polysaccharide. Therefore, the hapten must have reactive functionality and this structural modification must not influence the specificity of the antibodies that will be produced. 

Yamauchi Y, Litwin A, Adams L, Zimmer H, Hess EV (1975) Induction of antibodies to nuclear antigens in rabbits by immunization with hydralazine-human serum albumin conjugates. J Clin Invest 56 958... 

When the proteins of human milk were studied against horse antihuman serum, four distinct precipitation lines were obtained by Gugler et al. (G8). Among them, serum albumin, ci-globulin, and P2A-globulin could be identified, but the immune globulins were of different antigenic structure from serum Colostrum contains an additional... 

Immunization of rabbits with polymyxin-B-bovine serum albumin conjugates produced anti-polymyxin antibodies, as measured by direct agglutination of polymyxin-coated red blood cells (Lakin et al. 1975 a). These results and other studies in humans (Lakin et al. 1975 a, b Moller 1976) suggested a humoral response to the polymyxins, but information about antigenic determinants is as yet not available. 

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