Hello,
We have old banked samples of human bone marrow that are getting to be quite old, several years at least, and lysing the red blood cells has become difficult. Normally we use water and it works just fine on fresh samples and samples stored within the last year. Has anyone else run into this problem and have any suggestions on how to get good RBC lysis from older banked samples?
Hi Anna,
Yes, we have tried some commercial RBC lysis buffer and it wasn't that much of a better performer than water. It's not that they wont lyse, they just take a very long time. It seems like something well just have to deal with.
Old RBC tend to form clumps that seem to never lyse. Those clumps are easily identified when you try to disaggregate cell pellet as they never do properly. Although you lose some cells, I sometimes try to get rid of those RBC clumps so to keep a cleaner WBC cell pellet.
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