Measuring Lymphocyte Proliferation in Response to Specific Antigen and Mitogen Stimuli Using Flow Cytometry.

Background: We present a multivariate test system using flow cytometry after in-vitro lymphocyte stimulation using 5 mitogens and 7 antigens to describe in-vitro immunofunction.

Methods: The present work is a crucial step towards establishing a simple, CFSE-based, multivariate test system that can describe the dynamics of stimulus-induced lymphocyte proliferation with considerably more precision than is possible with the radionucleotide method using 3H-thymidine. Using multicolour flow cytometry, our method allows additional phenotyping of the proliferating cells and quantifies the proliferation behaviour by precisely resolving daughter generations and determining the precursor frequency.