ABSTRACT
The immunoparasitologist is faced with numerous difficulties in the objective of providing quantitative data on antiparasite antibody responses and in differentiating between "relevant" and "irrelevant" parasite antigens. In immunoparasitology, hybridoma-derived antibodies are being used for three broad purposes. These are the probes for antigenic determinants in the analysis of antigen location, organization, and "availability"; exploration of antigenic heterogeneity in parasite populations; detection of expression of cloned DNA in various vectors; and parasite typing. The development of immunodiagnostic reagents of high specificity. The analysis of antibody-mediated, parasite-inhibitory effects, in vivo and in vitro. The first indication that hybridoma-derived antibodies would be useful in the development of new immunodiagnostic tests (IDTs) of high specificity was provided in a model parasite system. Some correlation has been found between merozoite agglutinability of the antibodies and the efficiency of rhesus red cell invasion inhibition; the "functional" hybridoma antibodies had specificity for a high molecular weight biosynthetically-labeled protein.
