Anti-mucin antibodies as tools in airway mucus characterization

The extensive release of mucus is a hallmark of many inflammatory airway disorders. In which respect and to what extent such inflammation-borne mucus deviates from the mucus that is released from the airway epithelium of nondiseased individuals has not been investigated in detail. In order to characterize the molecular properties of the main mucus constituent mucin in health and disease, we set out to develop monoclonal antibodies against the major human airway mucin MUC5AC. As the glycosylation pattern of mucosal surface constituents was shown to be highly diverse, even among individuals of the same species, we…