Flow cytometry antibody screening using pooled red cells.

Background: For red cell alloantibody screening, the column agglutination technique (CAT) is used extensively, and flow cytometry (FC) screening has recently been demonstrated to be accurate, rapid, and cost effective. We attempted to determine whether the high sensitivity of FC allows pooling of screening red cells, which is generally not an acceptable technique in CAT.

Methods: For FC screening, a commercial two-cell screening panel was utilized for the preparation of individual cells (CSi), as well as pooled cells diluted 1 in 2 (CSp), and 1 in 3 (CS1/3).

Flow cytometry PRA using lymphocyte pools from random donors.

Background: Pools of lymphocytes from carefully chosen donors have been used for flow cytometry (FC) panel reactive antibody (PRA) assays. We intended to devise an FC PRA assay using mixed lymphocyte pools from a large number of randomly selected donors (RD FC PRA) to accurately predict the likelihood of a positive HLA crossmatch.

Methods: Lymphocyte pools were prepared from randomly selected donors (N = 120).