Immunophenotyping by Mass Cytometry

Mass cytometry is a novel technology similar to flow cytometry in which antibodies are tagged with heavy metal molecules rather than fluorophores and then detected with time-of-flight mass spectrometry. This enables measurement of up to 50 simultaneous parameters with no autofluorescent background and little or no spillover or required compensation. Mass cytometry has tremendous potential for the analysis of highly complex research or clinical samples and can measure 40-50 immunophenotypic markers at a time. This chapter describes most of the commonly used methods for performing basic immunophenotyping experiments by mass cytometry, and how this can be combined with measurement of cellular functional properties.