Advanced Multicolor Flow Cytometry Method for Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a bone marrow plasma cells malignancy. Despite impressive advancements of treatments, MM remains incurable due to complex clonality. Here, we present a novel 14-color flow cytometry (FACS) protocol for robust detection and visualization of MM clonality.

We developed a single-tube 14-color FACS protocol to analyze fresh bone marrow samples, tested on 8 MM patients. A premixed, stable antibody cocktail was used to enhance reproducibility and streamline workflow. Dimensionality reduction technique (t-SNE) was applied to visualize plasma cell clonality.

Our panel shown CD38⁺ CD138⁺ plasma cells, and their clonality. As expected, MM patients had unique clonal patterns with significant heterogeneity at primary diagnosis. Advanced t-SNE analysis provides a convenient visualization of multi-parameter heterogeneity in a unified 2-D plot. Importantly, our data presents some similarities among patients, and further differences between primary analysis and secondary relapse.

Taken together, our protocol provides a robust and efficient method for improving MM diagnosis using commercially available antibodies and a standard FACS machine. Concise visualization of multi-parameter FACS will help therapeutic decisions and advance the personalized treatment strategies with emerging antigen-specific drugs.