Some leukemic cells collected from patients undergo apoptosis when treated with a drug. Immunoblotting shows complete PARP cleavage.On the other hand, when I did Annexin V/ PI staining on the same cells after drug treatment, they did not exhibit any change from untreated cells in terms of annexin staining. The annexin staining, however, worked fine with other cell lines, with proper positive and negative controls.

Is this due to a problem with annexin staining or is it because of 'primary' nature of cells, being directly from patients? Do primary cell cultures (especially, leukemic cells) do not take up annexin stain? Do the cells need to be incubated with annexin for a longer time? Any help in this regard will be highly appreciated.

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