Detection of intracellular interleukin-10 by flow cytometry

Detection of cytokines is limited to measurements of the secreted molecule. To circumvent this problem we permeabilized the cell membrane with digitonin and localize cytokine expression using antibodies by flow cytometry. In this report we demonstrate that we can detect specific intracellular interleukin-10 (IL-10) in the HT-2 T cell line only after membrane permeabilization. With this technique intracellular cytokines are readily detectable.