Differential analysis of rat bone marrow by flow cytometry

A procedure for rat bone marrow differential analysis using Row cytometry a nd commercially available monoclonal antibodies is described. The method us es a combination of the differential expression of leucocyte common antigen (CD45) on different cell lineages and the expression of transferrin recept or (CD71). This is coupled with the side scatter measurement (SSC) for morp hological complexity and nucleic acid staining with LDS-751 for the separat ion of all nucleated cells from mature red blood cells. The relative number of erythroid, myeloid and lymphoid cells as well as the M:E ratio was gene rated by the flow cytometric method with acceptable reproducibility and a g ood agreement with microscopic analysis. There were no significant differen ces in mean values of the three cell populations between males and females or between bone marrow samples collected from left and right femurs. The fl ow cytometric analysis of bone marrow provides a semi-automated and rapid m ethod that is suitable for the evaluation of rat bone marrow in the preclin ical toxicity investigations.