Re: harvesting cultured macrophages

From: Ronald Rabin (rr84g@nih.gov)
Date: Fri Feb 22 2002 - 18:59:30 EST


Dee,

There are a few answers to your question, depending on what you are looking
for.  If you are purifying monocytes from whole blood, there are pretty good
separation reagents available, for example from Stem cell technologies.
There are protocols using Percoll that give you good purity as well.  Then
you can use them for experiments, and let them become macrophages with time,
or accelerate with M-CSF.  Elutriation is great if you have it available to
you.  All these will yeild more cells than adherence.

If there is some reason that isolating by adherence is important, the trick
I used long ago was to plate the PBMC on large petri dishes that are not
tissue culture treated.  The monocytes stuck and spread well, but could be
washed off with cold PBS in the absence of calcium (I would throw in some
EDTA).  If you let them sit for too long, they will stick too strongly
though; they appear to lay down their own matrix.  I tried pure teflon
dishes and couldn't get them off after a few days.

ron

on 2/21/02 9:09 PM, Dee Harrison-Findik at
duygu.harrison-findik@imvs.sa.gov.au wrote:

>
> Dear Flowers
> I am isolating macrophages from human blood by the simple adherence
> technique.
> I am having difficulties to harvest the adhered macrophages by conventional
> trypsinisation. Majority are still stuck to the TC. flask. Cell scraping
> does not yield very happy cells, either.
> Is there any specific reagent or technique which will lift off all (or
> majority) of the adhered macrophages as viable as possible ?
> Any input is greatly appreciated.
> Cheers
> Dee
>
>
>

Ronald L. Rabin, M.D.
Senior Staff Fellow
Laboratory of Immunobiochemistry
DBPAP/OVRR
Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
29 Lincoln Drive (MSC-4555)
Building 29, Room 129
Bethesda, MD   20892-4555

phone:  301.496.8806
fax:    301.402.5177
email:  rr84g@nih.gov



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