EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED AUTOANTIBODY TO HEAT-STABLE ALKALINE-PHOSPHATASE IN THE BABOON

Experimental evidence was collected which signifies that autoantibody was induced against lung heat-stable alkaline phosphatase which represented 60% of the total alkaline phosphatase of that tissue. Immunization of a male baboon with highly purified human placental alkaline phosphatase (heat-stable and cross-reactive with the baboon heat-stable enzyme) resulted in production of a precipitating factor in the immune serum which reacted with the heat-stable enzyme of both the human and baboon but not the heat-labile form of alkaline phosphatase of either species. This precipitating factor is a baboon autoantibody because it had a .gamma. mobility on immunoelectrophoresis and retarded electrophoretic mobility of the heat-stable enzyme from normal and immunized baboons; its titer increased as more booster injections were administered; it formed a well-defined precipitin rocket with the baboon heat-stable enzyme in the Laurell''s antigen-antibody crossed electrophoresis; and in immunodiffusion it formed a discrete precipitin line with the baboon heat-stable enzyme, which fused partially with the precipitin line of human placental alkaline phosphatase (immunogen).