Production of a specific IgY antibody against human CD41 antigen

Abstract

Twenty years ago, scientific community has shown a great interest for the generation of polyclonal antibodies
from egg yolk of immunized chickens for several advantageous that this method presents in comparison to conventional
ones like the fact that chickens often produce antibodies against phylogenetical highly conserved mammalian proteins
or peptides more efficiently than rabbits do. As a consequence, a conserved antigen can remain “masked” to the rabbit
immune system, and thus cause only a weak or a “silent” response. Furthermore, if chickens and rabbits are immunized
with the same mammalian antigen, very often the chickens respond with an antibody-specificity that can rarely
be achieved in rabbits. Insofar, the chicken is an ideal host to produce antibodies against human CD41 antigen. This
background knowledge has been the basis to produce specific antibodies in hens against human platelet gpIIb/IIIa. For
this proposal, three laying hens of 22 weeks old were injected with 20 μg of immunopurified complex antigen emulsified
with Freund complete and incomplete adjuvant two times at one month interval. Before one day the first immunization
up to 30 d after second one, eggs were collected and later processed for extraction of yolk antibodies and the specificity
of these ones was tested by Ouchterlony technique against pure preparation of antigen. It was demonstrated that
antibodies immune response was in reasonable titres and show the possibilities to research these ones in Transfusional
Medicine proposal.