anti-gerbil cytokines

[Richard Borschel]

In <199408040201.WAA18249 at sifon.CC.McGill.CA> DARREN at PARASIT.Lan.McGill.CA ("DARREN CAMPBELL") writes: 

>
>I am hoping to measure gerbil cytokines using elisa and/or bioassay. 
>Does anybody know of a source of anti-gerbil cytokine antibodies 
>(commercial or otherwise)? Or if any antibodies against mouse 
>cytokines are known to detect gerbil cytokines. Any info on this 
>would be much appreciated.
>
>D. Campbell (PhD student)
>Institute of Parasitology of McGill University
>Macdonald Campus, 21,111 Lakeshore Rd.
>Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada H9X 3V9
>e-mail: Darren at parasit.lan.mcgill.ca
>

I am unaware of any ab's for gerbils.  I ran into this problem 
while measuring cytokines in dogs and was faced with the decision
to either develop my own mab's, attempt to use polylonal anti-human
ab's or use bioassays.  I chose to use bioassays with some success. 
One can argue that in using bioassays, that they are sensitive to
funcionality of the cytokine, but they are relatively poor with
regards to quantification and specificity.  By this I mean that
you can only refer to them as "TNF-like" as an example unless you can 
show that a polyclonal ab knocks out the response.  The best course
is to attempt to develop mab's specific to the cytokine in question,
a difficult anf tedious task, but worth the effort.  I would see if you
have any success using mouse or rat ab's.  I would start with polyclonals
and if they seem to work, switch to monoclonals.  As to what to use for 
standards, that is another problem in of itself.
Best of luck.
Richard Borschel
borschel at ix.netcom.com
Dept of Clinical Investigations
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Washington, DC 20307