Meeting Abstract

116.3  Monday, Jan. 7  Sponge Hybridomas: Applications and Implications POMPONI, S.A.*; JEVITT, A; PATEL, J; Florida Atlantic University, Fort Pierce; Florida State University, Tallahassee; Florida Atlantic University, Fort Pierce spomponi@hboi.fau.edu

Many sponge-derived natural products with human health applications have been discovered over the past three decades. In vitro production has been proposed as one biological alternative to ensure adequate supply of marine natural products for preclinical and clinical drug development. Although primary cell cultures have been established for many marine invertebrate phyla, no cell lines with an extended life span have been established for marine invertebrates. For human health applications, hybridoma technology is used for production of monoclonal antibodies. We hypothesized that a sponge cell line could be formed by fusing sponge cells of one species with those of another, or by fusing sponge cells with rapidly dividing, marine-derived, non-sponge cells. Using standard methods for formation of hybridomas (i.e., incubation with polyethylene glycol), with appropriate modifications for temperature and salinity, cells from individuals of the same sponge species, as well as cells from individuals of two different sponge species, were successfully fused. Although other research has demonstrated that sponges are capable of cellular immune responses, our experiments demonstrate that no rejection occurred between the sponge species we tested. We conclude that either rejection responses are species-specific or the fusion technique suppressed cellular immune responses. Research in progress is focused on optimizing fusion to produce a cell line and to stimulate production of natural products. Hybridomas may also be used to stimulate production of novel natural products, as well as an experimental platform to test questions related to sponge chimeras in nature.