There had been quite a bit of discussion on this subject. I has been clarified
that antigen and immunogen have distinct meanings. The following mail i sent outin reply to a personal message, I thought would be useful to readers of the net and I hope that won't add to further confusion.
>I think the term antigen is defined in the context of antibody due to
historical reasons, that the antibodies were described prior to T cell
cell receptors. Otherwise I don't find any reason why a TCR recognisnig
peptide sequence (in the context of MHC) cannot be called an antigen. I
think when a chemical entity carries a B or T cell recognising epitope,
it should be called an antigen, and an antigen that by itself (without
being conjugated to an immunogen) cannot elicit an antibody response we
call it hapten. Please advise.
Raju
