Epitope specificity of demyelinating monoclonal autoantibodies directed against the human myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)

We describe the epitope specificity of a panel of ten demyelinating monoclo nal antibodies (mAb) that recognise the extracellular immunoglobulin-like d omain of human myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (hMOG(Igd)). All the mAb s bind to the surface of MOG-transfected fibroblasts as assessed in vitro b y FAGS and immunocytochemistry but failed to recognise overlapping 15-mer M OG peptides when assessed by ELISA. However, increasing peptide length to 2 5 amino acids revealed that four mAbs recognised epitopes within the amino acid sequence 63-100 of human MOG. In contrast, a non-demyelinating MOG-spe cific mAb recognised MOG by both ELISA and Western blotting but failed to s tain MOG transfected fibroblasts. These observations suggest that assays ba sed on the use of MOG-transfected cell lines will differentiate between pat hogenic and non-pathogenic MOG-specific antibody responses in experimental models and human diseases of the nervous system. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.