Nucleoside antibody specificity

Garro, a. j., Erlanger, B. F., Beiser, S. M. Specificity in the reaction between anti-P3n imidine nucleoside antibodies and DNA. In Nucleic acids in immunology, ed. by PlesciaO. j. and Braun W., p. 47-57- Berlin—Heidelberg-New York Springer 1968. 

Antibodies induced by nucleosides or nucleotides show marked specificity for the purine or pyrimidine base component. When cross-reactivity does occur with other bases, it may involve distinct populations of antibodies that can be removed by absorption, or it may involve all the antibody reacting with a lower affinity, so that large concentrations of crossreacting nucleoside are required. Specific sera can be obtained and used, at suitable dilutions, as selective reagents for any of the normal bases of RNA or DNA or for a wide range of modified base analogs. ... 

In this case, the reducing agent was cyanoborohydride. To verify that the conjugate contains intact purine base, a difference spectrum of the hapten-protein conjugate minus protein should be obtained it should be very close to the spectrum of the intact nucleoside or nucleotide alone. Further, the antibodies should be specific for the intact base in comparison with the degradation product. ... 

Evidence obtained from in vitro studies (cultured cell models) clearly suggests that NTs contribute to nucleoside-derived drug cytotoxicity. Nevertheless, key issues are to determine whether these findings can be transferred to clinical settings and whether they will help to understand what roles NT proteins actually play in tumor responsiveness to nucleoside-based therapies. However, the lack, until recently, of suitable molecular tools such as isoform-specific anti-NT antibodies and the difficulty to obtain and analyze tumor samples have delayed this approach. Clinical studies suggesting a link between NT expression and drug sensitivity are summarized in Table 2.2. 

Depending on the modification, physical separation and detection methods for modified bases/nucleosides/nucleotides in DNA hydrolysates can already or may eventually provide greater specificity and sensitivity than immxmological methods. However, it seems that antibodies recognizing adducts in polymeric DNA provide the only foreseeable basis for specific quantification of certain types of DNA modifications in individual cells and for isolation of DNA fiag-ments carrying those modifications. 

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