Any body know the difference between ficoll and percoll? Can I use percoll for isolation of the PBMC from whole blood and to use it?
I'm not sure exactly what the difference between Percoll and Ficoll is, but we routinely use Percoll to isolate PBMCs from non-human primate blood. We dilute 1L bottles of Percoll to 60% by adding 500 mL of sterile water and 167.3 mL of 10x PBS. I have attached our protocol as well.
That being said, the protocol is rather time consuming and somewhat technically challenging, and in my (limited) experience has yielded varying results. I have looked into Ficoll and think it would be a better alternative. STEMCELL technologies has a very good product (http://www.stemcell.com/en/Products/All-Products/SepMate.aspx) to use in conjunction with Ficoll to make the isolation process take only ~ 15 minutes. Sepmate also has a video of their product here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9IlBxjgLt4
Percoll is colloidal silica covered with polyvinylpyrrolidone monolayer. Ficoll is a dendrimeric copolymer of sucrose and epichlorohydrin. Both are good as they are minimally osmolalic in comparison to sucrose density gradients.
Density gradient protocols are archaic these days. There are much better options available that recover higher yields without the tedious centrifuging steps. AVIVA Bio has a cell separation system that works great.
Whether these can be used for isolating dense sickle red cells from sickle cell disease patients ?
Hi, Eliott Blackwood. It sounds interesting. Do you have additional information about those methods?
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