Human leukemia-associated antigen: relation to a family of surface glycoproteins.

A heteroantiserum raised to leukemic cells of a patient with non-T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has been extensively absorbed with cells from a leukemic T cell line and an autologous B lymphoblastoid cell line to produce a common ALL antiserum (CALLA). CALLA is specific for leukemic cells of most patients with non-T cell ALL and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in lymphoid blast crisis. It has been extensively tested on a wide variety of normal cells and is unreactive with them. CALLA identifies a surface glycoprotein having a m.w. of approximately 100,000 on reactive cell populations. In contrast, partially absorbed anti-ALL sera detect a similar glycoprotein band on CALLA-negative B and T cell lines. The glycoprotein identified by CALLA has been isolated and used as an immunogen. This new antiserum (C129) detects a 100,000-dalton glycoprotein not only on CALLA-positive cell populations but also on most CALLA-negative normal and malignant hematopoietic cells and on B and T cell lines. We conclude that there exists a family of 100,000-dalton glycoproteins that are present on a variety of normal, transformed, and malignant cells and that possess shared as well as unique antigenic regions. The expression of at least one of these antigens, detected by CALLA, may be tumor specific.