Background: Isolation of malignant plasma cells from bone marrow of patients with monoclonal gammopathies is critical for studies into the disease biology. The isolation of plasma cells have generally been performed by positive selection using plasma cell markers such as CD138 or by negative selection by removing other marrow cells using a cocktail of antibodies. We have previously demonstrated differences in apoptotic rates in plasma cells with and without this enrichment step. Here we have examined the effect of CD138 magnetic bead selection on the surface phenotype of plasma cells by flow cytometry.

Methods: Bone marrow aspirates from patients with myeloma (n=12) were first washed, and then lysed with ACK to eliminate red cells. The samples were split with a portion of the cells further processed for CD138 selection. ACK lysed only whole bone marrow (WBM) and sorted cells were stained with CD38, CD45, CD56, activation markers CD71 and CD69, adhesion markers CD49d, CD11b, and CD66, B cell markers CD19 and CD20, and clonality (kappa and lambda). Gates were drawn around the plasma cells and plasma cell subsets on the basis of CD38/45 expression for both sorted and unsorted samples. In addition, an aliquot of the sorted preparation was examined by immunohistochemistry to calculate the purity of the sorted sample.

Results: Significant differences were observed in terms of the percentage of plasma cells expressing the different antigens when the cells were selected using CD138. This difference included a greater than 10% difference in expression between the two preparations as well as a change from positive to negative in several cases. There was a substantial loss in the expression of CD20, CD71 and CD11b on plasma cells following CD138 based sorting (Table). Among the other markers, CD49d remains unchanged and changes are variable for the other markers. In addition, in 8 of the 12 cases, there was a nearly complete loss of the CD45 positive subset with a loss of discrimination between CD45 negative and CD45 positive plasma cell subsets in the remaining CD138 sorted preparations (figure: unsorted left, sorted right).

Conclusion: In conclusion, the process of CD138 sorting of plasma cells appears to change important markers on the plasma cells and may even eliminate a key subset from further analysis. This should be kept in mind when isolating plasma cells using CD138 positive selection for analysis such as gene expression profiling. Consideration should be given to negative selection using antibodies against other cell types to deplete them.

MarkerUnsorted %Sorted %
CD56 74 67 
CD69 11 2 
CD71 23 8 
CD49d 95 92 
CD11b 33 4 
CD66 5 1 
CD20 16 6 
MarkerUnsorted %Sorted %
CD56 74 67 
CD69 11 2 
CD71 23 8 
CD49d 95 92 
CD11b 33 4 
CD66 5 1 
CD20 16 6 
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Topics:
adhesions, antibodies, antigens, bone marrow, bone marrow aspiration, cd138, cd19 antigens, cd20 antigens, cd45 antigens, cd56 antigens

Disclosure: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

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2006, The American Society of Hematology
2006
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