Assay of an antitumor protein, neocarzinostatin, and its antibody by fluorescence polarization.

Abstract

Abstract I evaluated use of the fluorescence polarization technique to measure neocarzinostatin, a proteinaceous antitumor antibiotic, and its antibody, in serum. The antigen (neocarzinostatin), labeled with fluorescein isothiocyanate, was allowed to interact with its antibody in a cuvet, in the instrument, yielding an increase in the fluorescence polarization value. Antibody content was determined in the presence of a definite amount of the labeled antigen, fluorescence polarization values increasing in parallel with each addition of antibody. Antigen content was determined with a known amount of antibody, which reacted at first with an unknown amount of antigen in samples, followed by addition of a definite amount of the labeled antigen (competition). I used the method to determine a pharmacokinetic parameter, the apparent volume of distribution for neocarzinostatin in rabbits, using drug-injected rabbit sera. I evaluated precision, accuracy, and reproducibility, using various samples or possible interfering substances such as bilirubin and hemoglobin, and also compared results for antigen with those by single radial immunodiffusion assay. The present assay is fast (less than 2 min), sensitive (less than 10 nmol/liter can be detected), and simple (there is no separation step before readout of the results).