Abstract
This chapter defines and illustrates the notion of antigens. The chapter describes tumor antigens and addresses several more quantitative aspects of the interactions between antibodies and their respective epitopes. Antigen (Ag) is any substance (molecule) that provokes the production of a specific antibody or immunocyte (immune cell), or that interacts specifically with these products of the immune response, when penetrating the body of a vertebrate. The two types of natural macromolecules most investigated as antigens are proteins and polysaccharides. These also include glycoproteins, nucleoproteins, lipoproteins, etc., as well as peptidoglycans, glycolipids, and other conjugates. Nucleic acids are also antigenic. The chapter also discusses the molecular criteria for antigenicity, role of conformation in antigenicity, conformational transitions induced by hapten binding, and T- Cell antigenic epitope interactions, and superantigens. Superantigens are described as a group of microbial antigens that differ in several respects from conventional protein or peptide antigens. Two types of superantigens are described. One type is the so-called minor lymphocyte-stimulating (Mls) antigens (to differentiate them from MHC antigens) and the other type of superantigen includes certain bacterial, mycoplasmal, and viral proteins, of which staphylococcal and streptococcal enterotoxins are the most studied.
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