Production and preliminary characteristics of polyclonal antibodies specific to SSTR2A and SSTR5 receptors in pituitary

Abstract

The increasing interest in somatostatin receptors (SSTR) is mainly due to their involvement in the regulation of hormone secretion and the role in somatostatin analogue treatment of patients with pituitary adenomas. The efficiency of this treatment is highly dependent on receptor expression in tissue which on the protein level requires specific anti-receptor antibodies for testing.In this paper we introduced the principles for the production of several polyclonal antibodies specific for C-terminal intracellular part or N-terminal extracellular part of SSTR2A and SSTR5 receptors. The antibodies were highly specific for peptides used for immunization of animals, had low cross-reaction activities for other SSTR2A and SSTR5 peptides and reacted with receptors on immunoblots and in immunohistochemistry. The final verification of the antibodies’ specificity would allow us to perform the research concerning the structure and posttranslational modifications of SSTR and avoid dependency of commercial sources.