Impairment of the Antigenicity of a Protein Antigen following Its Injection into Rabbits

The findings presented in this paper indicate that 60 gm. of liver tissue, taken from adult donor rabbits 2 weeks after injecting them with large amounts of bovine gamma-globulin, and transferred to the peritoneal cavities of recipient rabbits prepared for a secondary reaction, contain enough of the antigen to induce the formation of detectable amounts of precipitin in the recipient rabbits. On the other hand, liver taken from donors 21 and 28 days after injecting them with the same antigen fails to bring about a similar effect. The findings outlined in the paper suggest that the antigen is degraded after the 2nd week to such an extent that it fails to engender the formation of complete antibody in the recipient animals, although previous work has shown (2-4) that the transfer of liver tissue from similar donor rabbits to mice renders the recipient mice anaphylactically sensitive to the antigen, bovine gamma-globulin. The implications of the findings are discussed.