Back in those days I used to use the classical Trizol LS reagent from invitrogen, and it worked fine for me with low numbers of cells too. I used it mostly for reverse - afterwards, but I can imagine, that it could work for seq. too. In my experience ion changers tend to reduce the amount You elute with each method. The end result is more pure, but the amount tends to be lower.

Check this kit, it works fine ( try to avoid the DNase step as it could degradate your RNA)

https://www.fishersci.fr/shop/products/ambion-rnaqueous-total-rna-isolation-kit-2/10075994

PureLink, mirVana or MagMax kits- all of them will work. There is also Cells-to-Ct kit which skips RNA purification and produces a crude lysate- that works great for qRT-PCR direct input. It works beautifully for low number of cells, and there is a separate kit for single cell input

Hi Matt,

Were you able to find a kit for extracting RNA from low cell number of PBMCs? If yes, can you please suggest which kit did you use? The minimum cells I might have is about 2000.

Hey Angela,

This kit works nice fro low cells number compared to other kits on the market. A bit pricey but worthy.

Link

https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/AM1931

RNAqueous™-Micro Total RNA Isolation Kit

Good luck

Better to use trizol instead of RNA isolation kit if you want to increase the yield/concentration of isolated RNA from PBMC. In my experience RNA isolation kits no doubt gives better purity but it drastically reduce the concentration of the RNA.