Nanoparticles for Flow Cytometry

Typical flow cytometry dot plot with SSC on y-axis and fluorescence due to cell staining with Mouse anti Human CD8 NTB660 on x-axis

Flow cytometry is a single-cell analysis technology. Biotechnology and medicine are the fields which benefit more from flow cytometry even though it is employed even in industrial environments. Recent years brought a breath of freshness because of the constant, and increasing, needs for the analysis of multiple parameters. After the expansion of lasers and detectors, is now the time for the growth in the number of available fluorochromes.

Conventional flow cytometry can be described, in a simplistic way, as a technique which allows small entities to be moved in a faster-moving sheath fluid to encounter the beam of a light source. In this process, a sample containing cells or particles is injected into the instrument and then focused to flow one cell at a time through a laser beam. The light scattered is characteristic to the cells and their components. When cells are marked with fluorescent probes light is absorbed and then emitted in a characteristic wavelength collected by specific detectors.

Recently, different types of cytometry were developed and are now on the crest of the wave. Is the case of spectral flow cytometry in which the evaluation is due to the whole spectrum from visible to near-infrared region and not to the signal’s peak. Instead in mass cytometry, the employed probes are metal isotopes, normally not available in biological systems, which are detected by elemental mass spectrometry. Spectral flow cytometry and mass cytometry are the most promising candidates to fulfill the requests of multiparametric analysis. In the imaging cytometry, the image of each cell is detected by a CCD camera which produces an image for each analyzed cell.