Direct monoclonal antibody rosetting. An effective method for weak antigen detection and large scale separation of human mononuclear cells.

A direct monoclonal antibody rosetting technique is described which serves as a simple, reliable, and very sensitive method for the detection of surface antigens on human leukocytes. In this technique the discriminative monoclonal anti-leukocyte antibodies are directly coupled to ox erythrocytes (oxE) by use of CrCl3. The procedure can be applied to the effective separation of mononuclear cell subsets. By choosing a gradient of appropriate density labeled cells are either isolated in high purity or quantitatively eliminated. This technique proved to be particularly suitable for the large scale purification of autologous or allogeneic bone marrow transplants where either leukemic cells or T cells have to be completely eliminated without damaging sensitive stem cells.