Antibody response by cultured spleen fragments from carrier-primed mice to hapten-protein conjugates

Abstract

Hapten-protein conjugates stimulated very poor anti-hapten responses in mouse spleen fragment cultures from unimmunized mice, whereas hapten coupled to type III pneumococcal polysaccharide or polylysine induced good responses. When the donors of the fragments were primed with the carrier protein, hapten-protein conjugates induced a strong anti-hapten response. Both the true primary and the carrier-primed response in vitro consisted mainly of IgA antibodies of 9-13S. In carrier-primed responses also IgM was produced at the beginning and IgG at the end of those responses.