Immunogenicity Decay of Foreign Antigens in the Mouse

Abstract

Studies performed in our laboratory on the kinetics of immunological memory in isolated and transferred lymphoid cell populations have established that memory decays with a half-life of about 200 days, or about one-sixth of life-span. The high degree of radio-sensitivity of the memory, regardless of the time of irradiation (e.g., before or after the transfer), led us to interpret it as mediated by the presence of a specifically determined, slowly declining cell line, endowed with the capacity (when restimulated by the antigen) to give rise to rapidly dividing, antibody-producing cell lines [1].