<p>IC2, a well known monoclonal autoantibody, derived from newly diabetic BB rat and seems to be an important biomarker for non-invasive functional imaging of beta cells in vivo. It specially and uniquely binds with pancreatic beta cells as confirmed in some previous studies. RIN-5AH is a pancreatic beta cell, which reacts with IC2 is used here to identify and characterize the molecular nature of the IC2 auto antigen by using TLC and HPTLC following by immuno-staining. An unpublished work already had done by Spitalnik et al, 1991 with another rat pancreatic beta cell (RINm5F) extracted glycolipids. In this study, the same work was done, not only with glycolipids from various cell lines but also lipids extracted from purified plasma membrane is made to confirm or refuge that IC2 was found to bind with only the glycolipids containing galactose-3-sulfate. This highly unique observation can however hardly explain the unique beta cell surface specificity without involvement of other more beta cell specific antigenic structures. We are therefore also searching the protein part involved in the auto antigenic determinant. Analyzing the molecular nature of IC2 binding auto-antigen, will help to understand both the role it might plays in the pathogenesis of insulin dependant diabetes. It could also help to elucidate the etiology of diabetes and finally to be a new serum autoantibody biomarker.</p>

IC2, a well known monoclonal autoantibody, derived from newly diabetic BB rat and seems to be an important biomarker for non-invasive functional imaging of beta cells in vivo. It specially and uniquely binds with pancreatic beta cells as confirmed in some previous studies. RIN-5AH is a pancreatic beta cell, which reacts with IC2 is used here to identify and characterize the molecular nature of the IC2 auto antigen by using TLC and HPTLC following by immuno-staining. An unpublished work already had done by Spitalnik et al, 1991 with another rat pancreatic beta cell (RINm5F) extracted glycolipids. In this study, the same work was done, not only with glycolipids from various cell lines but also lipids extracted from purified plasma membrane is made to confirm or refuge that IC2 was found to bind with only the glycolipids containing galactose-3-sulfate. This highly unique observation can however hardly explain the unique beta cell surface specificity without involvement of other more beta cell specific antigenic structures. We are therefore also searching the protein part involved in the auto antigenic determinant. Analyzing the molecular nature of IC2 binding auto-antigen, will help to understand both the role it might plays in the pathogenesis of insulin dependant diabetes. It could also help to elucidate the etiology of diabetes and finally to be a new serum autoantibody biomarker.