WHO collaborative study on the use of monoclonal antibodies for the intratypic differentiation of poliovirus strains

An international collaborative study was carried out to identify monoclonal antibodies that could reliably discriminate between wild polioviruses and strains derived from Sabin vaccine viruses. For poliovirus types 2 and 3, monoclonal antibodies were identified that reacted specifically with type 2 or type 3 strains which gave T1-oligonucleotide maps similar to or indistinguishable from that of Sabin vaccine virus, thus indicating their vaccine origin. These monoclonal antibodies failed to react with strains which gave T1 maps unrelated to that of Sabin vaccine virus. However for type 1, five of the six antibodies examined in the study reacted only with strains with a T1 map indistinguishable from that of type 1 Sabin vaccine virus. In contrast, other monoclonal antibodies against poliovirus types 1, 2 and 3 reacted broadly within a serotype.