Enrichment of murine and human Langerhans cells with solid phase immunoabsorption using pan-leukocyte monoclonal antibodies.

Using a solid phase immunoabsorption (panning) technique, we have employed pan-leukocyte monoclonal antibodies to enrich and deplete murine and human Langerhans cells from cell suspensions of normal skin. Langerhans cell-enriched fractions contained 80-99% mononuclear cells, almost all of which had the ultrastructural features of Langerhans cells. These results are comparable to those achieved by panning for human Langerhans cells with anti-Leu-6(T6) antibody. Similarly, less than 1% of these cells were detectable in Langerhans cell-depleted fractions and such fractions were incapable of stimulating allogeneic lymphocytes in the skin cell-lymphocyte reaction. We conclude that panning with pan-leukocyte antibodies is an effective means of enriching or depleting Langerhans cells from heterogeneous skin cell suspensions and can yield results similar to those achieved with more Langerhans cell-specific reagents such as anti-Leu-6(T6). These findings are of particular significance to the enrichment and depletion of murine Langerhans cells since they express no known correlate of the human Leu-6(T6) antigen.