Howard Meyerson, Kaplan David
Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-4943, USA.
Front Biosci. 2002 Apr 1;7:c33-43. doi: 10.2741/meyerson.
Immunofluorescent staining of mammalian cells has provided a reliable approach for detection of specific antigen expression in situ. An advantage of fluorescent markers has been their applicability to automated, high-throughput cellular analysis by flow cytometry. Flow cytometry has thus become an integral component of clinical laboratory diagnostics, particularly in the areas of immunology and hematology. One of the major drawbacks of traditional immunofluorescent staining, even with flow cytometric detection, has been the difficulty in detecting low abundance cellular antigens, some of which may have clinical and scientific significance. To address these problems, staining techniques have recently been developed to increase the sensitivity of cellular antigen detection by flow cytometry. In this review we will describe a few of these techniques and focus on enzymatic amplification staining as a means to generate a highly augmented antigen-specific signal. We will also discuss practical applications of enzymatic amplification for immunostaining of clinical specimens.
哺乳动物细胞的免疫荧光染色为原位检测特定抗原表达提供了一种可靠的方法。荧光标记的一个优点是它们适用于通过流式细胞术进行自动化、高通量的细胞分析。因此，流式细胞术已成为临床实验室诊断的一个重要组成部分，特别是在免疫学和血液学领域。传统免疫荧光染色的一个主要缺点，即使采用流式细胞术检测，也在于难以检测低丰度的细胞抗原，其中一些可能具有临床和科学意义。为了解决这些问题，最近开发了一些染色技术来提高流式细胞术检测细胞抗原的灵敏度。在这篇综述中，我们将描述其中的一些技术，并重点介绍酶促扩增染色，作为产生高度增强的抗原特异性信号的一种手段。我们还将讨论酶促扩增在临床标本免疫染色中的实际应用。
