Immunofluorescence with monoclonal antibodies on poly-L-lysine coated slides: an alternative to conventional methods.

It is sometimes difficult to perform immunofluorescence tests because of low cell numbers. Therefore a simple method using poly-L-lysine coated slides was applied to immunofluorescence and compared with the routine suspension method. Peripheral blood lymphocytes from normal persons, samples of normal bone marrow, thymus and tonsil as well as samples from patients with leukemia or lymphoma were tested with these two methods using 20 different monoclonal antibodies. The PLL-slide method was shown to be comparable with the suspension method and is an alternative in case of low cell numbers, since as few as 3 X 10(4) cells can be tested for one antigen.