Experimental comparison of three monoclonal antibodies for the class-selective immunoextraction of triazines - Correlation with molecular modeling and principal component analysis studies

The specificity of three immunosorbents (ISs) based on different monoclonal anti-triazine antibodies has been characterized by extraction recoveries studies and with step elution experiments. Both indicated that the anti-dichloroatrazine IS is specific of terbutylazine and cyanazine. The anti-atrazine IS is specific of the chlorotriazines, whereas the anti-ametryn IS can trap all the triazines. This confirms the great influence of the hapten design on the specificity of the resulting antibodies, even if the target molecules are small. Moreover, the anti-ametryn IS is suitable for class-selective extraction of triazines contained in complex matrices. An approach designed to learn more about the specificity for a group of structurally related compounds of antibodies produced with a given compound is proposed and evaluated. Molecular modeling followed by principal component analysis has been used to obtain distribution maps with the relative position of each immunoconjugate and all the triazines. In all three cases, conclusions on specificity made with the analysis of the maps fit well with the experimental results. Consequently, molecular modeling coupled with principal component analysis seems to be a unique, inexpensive, and rapid tool to select the appropriate hapten providing highly specific or class-specific antibodies according to the given problem. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.