A recombinant monoclonal-based Taenia antigen assay that reflects disease activity in extra-parenchymal neurocysticercosis

BACKGROUND: Antigen tests for diagnosis and disease monitoring in some types of neurocysticercosis (NCC) are useful but access to testing has been limited by availability of proprietary reagents and/or kits. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Three previously identified IgM-secreting hybridomas whose IgM products demonstrated specificity to Taenia solium underwent variable heavy and light chain sequencing and isotype conversion to mouse IgG. Screening of these recombinantly expressed IgG anti-Ts hybridomas, identified one (TsG10) with the highest affinity to crude Taenia antigen. TsG10 was then used as a capture antibody in a sandwich antigen detection immunoassay in combination with either a high titer polyclonal anti-Ts antibody or with biotinylated TsG10 (termed TsG10*bt). Using serum, plasma, and CSF samples from patients with active NCC and those from NCC-uninfected patients, ROC curve analyses demonstrated that the TsG10-TsG10-*bt assay achieved a 98% sensitivity and 100% specificity in detecting samples known to be antigen positive and outperformed the polyclonal based assay (sensitivity of 93% with 100% specificity). By comparing levels of Ts antigen (Ag) in paired CSF (n = 10) or plasma/serum (n = 19) samples from well-characterized patients with extra-parenchymal NCC early in infection and at the time of definitive cure, all but 2 (1 from CSF and 1 from plasma) became undetectable. There was a high degree of correlation (r = 0.98) between the Ag levels detected by this new assay and levels found by a commercial assay. Pilot studies indicate that this antigen can be detected in the urine of patients with active NCC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: A newly developed recombinant monoclonal antibody-based Ts Ag detection immunoassay is extremely sensitive in the detection of extra-parenchymal NCC and can be used to monitor the success of treatment in the CSF, serum/plasma and urine. The ability to produce recombinant TsG10 at scale should enable use of this antigen detection immunoassay wherever NCC is endemic. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifiers: NCT00001205 - & NCT00001645.