NOTE Clinical Pathology Generation of Monoclonal Antibody against Canine Neural-Cell Adhesion Molecule

ABSTRACT. A monoclonal antibody, K9BYU, was generated using Escherichia coli recombinant extracellular domain of canine neural-cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) as an antigen. Immunoreactivity of K9BYU to insect cell recombinant canine N-CAM was demon-strated by Western blotting using Sf9 insect cells transfected with the canine N-CAM gene. In Western blotting against canine brain tissue, K9BYU detected three isoforms of N-CAM that correspond to three major isoforms of human and mouse N-CAM (N-CAM-120,-140, and-180). From these results, K9BYU was considered to be a useful tool for research of canine N-CAM. KEY WORDS: canine, monoclonal antibody, neural-cell adhesion molecule. J. Vet. Med. Sci. 70(8): 845–847, 2008 Neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM), also known as CD56, is a cell surface glycoprotein belonging to the immu-noglobulin superfamily and mediates homophilic and het-erophilic cell-cell interactions [9]. N-CAM is expressed as three major isoforms generated by alternative splicing of a single gene product with identical extracellular domains: two transmembrane isoforms of 140-kDa (N-CAM-140) and 180-kDa (N-CAM-180), and a glycosylphosphatidyli-nositol-anchored 120-kDa isoform (N-CAM-120) [10]. Al