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Copyright of Experientia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It has been established that MoAb TM-316 recognizes an epitope on leucocytes and specifically inhibits the chemotactic behavior of leucocytes. In the present paper, the distribution of this epitope on the cell surface and in intracellular organelles was studied by immunoelectron microscopy. Leucocytes separated from the blood of healthy men and from synovial fluid from patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis were used. They were fixed with a mixture containing paraformaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and picric acid. As the second antibody, goat anti-mouse IgM conjugated to 10 nm gold colloids was employed. In normal specimens, the epitope was found to some extent on the cytoplasmic membrane of neutrophilic leucocytes, but it was only sparsely distributed on eosinophilic and basophilic leucocytes. On activated neutrophilic leucocytes, obtained from the synovial fluid of rheumatoid arthritis patients, the immunolabeling was markedly increased. The number of sites where the epitope occurs on the surface of leucocytes is thus associated with the cell type, and also with the level of activation of the leucocytes. In order to investigate the processing of the antigen, the intracellular localization of the epitope in the neutrophilic leucocytes was also studied. The epitope recognized by TM-316 was also detected in/on the characteristic granules and Golgi stacks.