(Santon et al., 1986;Ozanne et al., 1986;Velu et al., 1987; Difore et al., 1987;Harris et al., 1990). In addition, some of these tumours produce ligands for the receptor and it has been suggested that an autocrine mechanism is involved in progression of cancers of this type (Sporn & Roberts 1985;Imanishi et al., 1988;Nistar et al., 1988; Dernyck 1990;Tateishi et al., 1990;Yoshida et al., 1990; Morishige et al., 1991). Over-expression of the EGFR by tumour cells, compared to their normal counterparts, has been reported for a number of squamous cell carcinomas (e.g. Cowley et Hendler et al., 1984;Sainsbury et al., 1985;Gullick et al., 1986) and this in turn was also correlated to poor prognosis in patients with some of these carcinomas (reviewed by Gullick, 1991 We have reported (Modjtahedi, et al., 1992) the preparation and properties of ten rat mAbs that bind to three distinct epitopes (A,B,C) on the external domain of the EGFR using as immunogen the human squamous cell carcinoma HN5. While all of the mAbs against epitopes B and C blocked the binding of EGF and TGFa to the receptor on a number of squamous carcinoma cell lines the antibodies against epitope C were an order of magnitude better than the others at inhibiting cell growth. The best antibody, ICR16, inhibited completely the growth of HN5 cells in vitro at antibody concentrations above 1 nM. However, none of the antibodies was of the IgG2b isotype and therefore would not be expected to interact efficiently with the host immune effector functions in rat, mouse or man. Since our intention is to test the effectiveness of antibodies in the clinic we report here the preparation of a second series of antibodies using as immunogen the EGFR over-expressing breast carcinoma (Filmus et al., 1985) searching particularly for IgG2b antibodies with growth inhibitory properties.
Materials and methods
Cell lines