PRODUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF HUMORAL IMMUNE RESPONSE AGAINST MUSTARD GAS

One of the promising aspects of the immunological research on chemical war gas is to investigate the immunogenicity of some hazardous compounds such as mustard gas. Mustard gas is categorized as a "hapten" based on its physical and chemical properties. Haptenic chemicals which do not possess immunogenicity could be immunogenic experimentally when conjugated with a suitable protein carrier. To do so, mustard gas was coupled to a protein carrier and injected to an animal model (rabbit). After hyperimmunization, specific antibodies were obtained through special purification procedures and used in different immunological tests. It was observed that there are two different groups of antibody populations, one against the haptenic group and the other towards the protein carrier.