TRANSPLANTATION ANTIGENS, PRODUCTION 



OF HAEMAGGLUTININS AND INHIBITION OF 



THE HAEMAGGLUTINATION REACTION 



G. Lejeune-Ledant* 



Lahoratoire de Chiriirgie Experimentak, Universite de Liege 



All the experimental work performed in recent years indicates 

 that transplantation of hving tissues or injection of hving cells 

 elicits both transplantation immunity and humoral immunity 

 (Medawar, 1959). 



The humoral immunity can be demonstrated by the appearance 

 of isoantibodies and especially haemagglutinins (Gorer and 

 Mikulska, 1954; Amos et ah, 1954). Of course, many other 

 humoral antibodies may be identified, for instance haemolysins 

 (Hildemann, 1957) leuco-agglutinins (Amos, 1953), cytotoxins 

 (Gorer and O'Gorman, 1956), but the haemagglutination reaction 

 is perhaps the easiest and the most accurate one, principally since 

 Gorer (1947), in his important pioneer work in this field, devised 

 his method employing dextran and human serum. 



Transplantation immunity can easily be identified by the 

 biological test of the second-set phenomenon (Billingham, 

 Brent and Medawar, 1956). If living tissue grafts ehcit both a 

 transplantation immunity and humoral immunity, two questions 

 should be answered: 



(i) Does any antigen — whatever its form may be, living cells 

 or cell-free extracts — which sensitizes to a skin homograft of the 

 same donor provoke the formation of haemagglutinins ? 



(2) If so, should not any antigen of these various kinds which 



* Dr. Lejeime-Ledant was not able to attend the meeting due to illness, and his 

 paper was presented by Prof. F. Albert. 



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