An Efficient Method for Producing Monoclonal Antibodies against Multi-pass Membrane Proteins

Antibodies have greatly contributed to the development of medical science and pharmacology, because of their high specificity. The cell fusion method has developed monoclonal antibodies (mAb) technology, such that massive amounts of mAb with a uniform structure can be produced. Although mAb have been produced against many proteins so far, the production of mAb against multi-pass transmembrane proteins, such as G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) and various transporter proteins has been extremely difficult. The complicated structures, poorly extracellular regions, and high hydrophobicity of multiple-transmembrane proteins make it difficult to produce mAb against them. Production of mAb that recognize the extracellular region of living cells is thought to be important in determining the ability of a protein. Based on these findings, we tried to produce mAb against a multi-pass transmembrane transporter using green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fused full-length target proteins as immunogens. Furthermore, the immunizing method has proved to be important in generating functional mAb. We succeeded in producing functional mAb that react against the extracellular region of a 12-pass transmembrane transporter in a living cell. Based on this success, we began to produce mAb against seven-transmembrane GPCR. In this symposium, we report on the results of producing mAb against Slip receptors, a type of GPCR.