title: Validation of antibody reagents for mucin analysis in chronic inflammatory airway diseases.
abstract: In chronic inflammatory airway diseases, mucins display disease-related alterations in quantity, composition and glycosylation. This opens the possibility to diagnose and monitor inflammatory airway disorders and their exacerbation based on mucin properties. For such an approach to be reasonably versatile and diagnostically meaningful, the mucin of interest must be captured in a reliable, patient-independent way. To identify appropriate mucin-specific reagents, we tested anti-mucin antibodies on mucin-content-standardized, human bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples in immunoblot assays. All commercially available monoclonal antibodies against the major airway mucin MUC5AC were screened, except for those with known specificity for carbohydrates, as glycosylation patterns are not mucin-specific. Our results indicated considerable inter-patient and inter-antibody variability in mucin recognition for all antibodies and samples tested. The best results in terms of signal strength and reproducibility were obtained with antibodies Mg-31, O.N.457 and 45M1. Additional epitope mapping experiments revealed that only one of the antibodies with superior binding to MUC5AC recognized linear peptide epitopes on the protein backbone.
authors.affiliation: a Division of Mucosal Immunology & Diagnostics, Priority Area Asthma & Allergy, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Krause
authors.affiliation: a Division of Mucosal Immunology & Diagnostics, Priority Area Asthma & Allergy, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Röckendorf
authors.affiliation: b BioMaterialBank (BMB) North, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.|c Airway Research Center North (ARCN), Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL) , Germany.
authors.forename: Karoline I
authors.initials: KI
authors.lastname: Gaede
authors.affiliation: a Division of Mucosal Immunology & Diagnostics, Priority Area Asthma & Allergy, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.
authors.forename: Katrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ramaker
authors.affiliation: a Division of Mucosal Immunology & Diagnostics, Priority Area Asthma & Allergy, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.
authors.forename: Heike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sinnecker
authors.affiliation: a Division of Mucosal Immunology & Diagnostics, Priority Area Asthma & Allergy, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences , Borstel , Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Frey
mesh_terms: D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal / Q000494:pharmacology*; D000918:Antibody Specificity / Q000276:immunology*; D001249:Asthma / Q000378:metabolism; D001992:Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid / Q000737:chemistry; D018604:Epitope Mapping; D000939:Epitopes / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D055271:Mucin 5AC / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal; D000939:Epitopes; C524678:MUC5AC protein, human; D055271:Mucin 5AC
keywords: Asthma; COPD; MUC5AC; chronic inflammatory airway diseases; mucin capturing; mucin quantification; mucus