Appeal No. 2003-2084 Page 3
Application No. 08/241,061
Claims 99-102 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Schuurs.
We reverse all rejections.
Background
The present invention is concerned with a problem in the immunoassay art
known as crosstalk. As explained:
Methods to prepare monoclonal antibodies to ligands which, by themselves, do
not generate an immunological response are well known to those skilled in the art. The
ligand, or an analogue thereof, is generally coupled, chemically, to a carrier molecule,
e.g., a protein, peptide, or other polymer, to form an immunogen (one example of a
ligand analogue conjugate as defined herein) which elicits an immunological response.
Antibodies are thus raised to the surface of the carrier molecule onto which is coupled
the ligand. The selection or screening of antibodies is then performed to choose the
antibody which best fulfills the intended use of the antibody. The screening of
antibodies is well known to those skilled in the art and is generally performed by binding
a ligand-carrier conjugate to a solid phase, allowing the raised antibody to bind to the
ligand-carrier conjugate and detecting the presence of the bound antibody with a
labelled anti-antibody conjugate. An inherent problem with the generation and
screening of antibodies is the difficulty in determining the location of binding of the
antibody to the ligand, i.e., the binding site; that is, it is not clear which portion of the
ligand analogue is bound by the antibody. This can result in the selection of antibodies
which possess a very small but definite affinity to the carrier molecule, or to the
chemical structure (herein called the "linkage site") which attaches the ligand analogue
to carrier molecule. Such an antibody, will thus bind (an occurrence known as
crosstalk) to other, or uncomplementary, carrier molecule-ligand complexes having
such a linkage, and produce false positive results when such other complexes are
present in a test.
Specification, page 6.
The crosstalk problem is addressed by the present invention as
follows:
The present invention is directed to ligand receptor assays in which
the presence of a multiplicity of ligands are measured in a single
determination. In particular, the present invention relates to the
preparation and use of reagents as crosstalk inhibitors in ligand receptor
assays. The crosstalk inhibitors resemble the chemical structure (or
linkage site) which links the ligand analogue to the carrier molecule of a
ligand analogue conjugate. Thus, the crosstalk inhibitors reduce or
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