The antibody recognizes an epitope common to silaogangliosides and sulfatides from the plasma membranes of neurons, and neuroendocrine and glial cells. Anti-A2B5 has been used to specifically stain:
· Neurofibrillary tangles in the post-mortem brain tissue of patients with a confirmed diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (Majocha et al., 1989)
· Neurons of chicken retina, brain, spinal cord, and dorsal root ganglia (Schnitzer & Schachner, 1982; Eisenbarth et al., 1979.
· Rat striatal nerve terminals [synaptosomes (Wolf & Kapatos, 1989].
· Neuroblastoma cells in man (Oppedal et al., 1989; Coakham et al., 1985).
· Rat insulinoma cells and pancreatic islets cells (Shimizu et al., 1983; Bartholomeusz et al., 1989).
· Human and rat thymic epithelial cells (Haynes, et al., 1988).
· Cells involved in gliogenesis (Bottenstein et al., 1988; Suzumura & slerberg, 1989).
· Oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, type II (Dubois-Dalcq et al., 1990).