Measurement of Microsphere Concentration Using a Flow Cytometer with Volumetric Sample Delivery

Microsphere concentrations are needed to assign equivalent reference fluorophores (ERF) units to microspheres used in quantitative flow cytometry. A flow cytometer with a syringe based sample delivery system was evaluated for the measurement of the concentration of microspheres contained in a vial of lyophilized microspheres certified by BD Biosciences to contain 50,600 microspheres. The concentration was measured by counting the number of microspheres contained in the volume delivered by the flow cytometer and dividing the number by the volume. The syringe volume was calibrated both in the delivery and draw modes, and the results of the volume calibration were summarized by two calibration lines. The delivered volume was obtained by dividing the number of recorded events by the concentration of microsphere count standard in the sample tube. The draw volume was obtained by weighting the sample tube before and after the draw. The slope of the draw volume calibration line was equal to 1.00 with an offset of -13 µL. The slope of the delivered volume calibration was 0.93 suggesting a systematic volume-dependent bias, which can be rationalized as an effect of suspension flow in capillaries. When the sample volume was set to values between 150 µL and 300 µL, both calibration curves gave similar results suggesting that a good estimate of the true delivered volume can be obtained by subtracting 13 µL from the delivered volume indicated by the syringe settings. The number of microspheres in the volume was obtained by passing the suspension contained in the volume through a laser beam and counting the number of events in which the signals from the scattering and fluorescence detectors exceeded threshold values. Measurements were performed with the lyophilized microspheres made by BD Biosciences and fluorescein microspheres (expired reference material RM 8640) in three buffers: a phosphate buffer saline (PBS), a buffer containing PBS and 0.05 % BSA (bovine serum albumin) by mass, and a buffer containing PBS and 0.05 % TWEEN 20 detergent solution (P1379 Sigma-Aldrich) by mass. It was found that the concentration of count standard was significantly higher in the PBS+BSA buffer relative to the value obtained in PBS buffer. Values for PBS+0.05 % TWEEN 20 buffer were intermediate. The effect of buffer on the measured microsphere concentration was reported previously. The suggested procedure for the measurement of the concentration of microspheres with the flow cytometer is to use PBS+0.05 % BSA buffer, accumulate data for a delivered volume of 150 µL to 300 µL, and reduce the indicated delivered volume by 13 µL when performing the concentration calculation. The procedure was tested on a mixture of lyophilized microspheres and RM 8640 microspheres. The resulting lyophilized microsphere concentration was consistent with the certified value. The RM 8640 concentration determined using the suggested procedure was consistent with the concentration value determined using the relative method with the lyophilized microspheres as the reference. The uncertainties, obtained from one standard deviation of repeated measurements, were about 4 %.