Figure 5
From: Microbial Cryptotopes are Prominent Targets of B-cell Immunity
Evaluation of neutralizing efficacy of immune sera from one patient with recent primary infection (serum 1) and two patients with latent infection (serum 2 & 3) and an immunoglobulin preparation (IVIG Baxter) after blocking of different fractions of CMV-specific Igs.
Complement-inactivated sera and IVIG was either diluted with Tris-buffer (control) or pre-incubated with native whole CMV lysate (Tris) to block conformational and linear epitopes or unfolded whole CMV lysate (Urea-treated, precipitated with ethanol) to block preferentially cryptotopes. The horizontal, dashed line indicates 50% neutralization of virus. Final viral protein concentrations used for the IVIG experiment was 50 μg/ml and 50, 5 and 0.5 μg/ml for the experiments with the sera. Final dilution ranged from 1:100–1:800 as indicated in the figure. All experiments were done in triplicates and error bars indicate the standard error of the mean.
