Antibody specificity for vIL-6 and establishment of a vIL-6 ELISA.

(A) By Western blotting, a rabbit polyclonal antibody and a mouse monoclonal antibody raised against recombinant vIL-6 recognized vIL-6 but not hIL-6; a mouse anti-hIL-6 monoclonal antibody recognized hIL-6 but not vIL-6. (B) Detection of vIL-6 by a solid-phase sandwich ELISA using an anti-vIL-6 mouse monoclonal and a rabbit polyclonal antibodies. The lower limit of sensitivity (the minimum amount of protein detected with 95% confidence) was calculated at 43.8 pg/mL MBP-vIL-6. The assay is linear (r = 0.999) between 30 and 3360 pg/mL of vIL-6. hIL-6 was not recognized in this vIL-6 ELISA. (C) Detection of hIL-6, but not vIL-6, by a hIL-6–specific ELISA.