Seek well and ye shall find.

The observation of small or moderate numbers of monoclonal B cells in the blood of patients with diffuse or even nodular B lymphomas is not particularly surprising; nevertheless, the sophisticated and convincing technics used by Ault in this issue of the Journal represent an innovative means of demonstrating the presence of such cells and may show promise for monitoring lymphoma and, possibly, leukemia. Ault cleverly used fluorescent staining and the flow-fluorescence and light-scatter analysis capabilities of the fluorescence-activated cell sorter1 , 2 to identify monoclonal populations of immunoglobulin-bearing cells present in Ficoll–Hypaqueseparated peripheral-blood lymphocytes. He stained and analyzed the lymphocyte fraction separately . . .

[1]  Leonore A. Herzenberg,et al.  Fetal cells in the blood of pregnant women: detection and enrichment by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. , 1979, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  J. Dilley,et al.  Rescue of immunoglobulin secretion from human neoplastic lymphoid cells by somatic cell hybridization. , 1978, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[3]  C. Milstein,et al.  Continuous cultures of fused cells secreting antibody of predefined specificity , 1975, Nature.

[4]  R G Sweet,et al.  Development and application of a rapid cell sorter. , 1973, Clinical chemistry.

[5]  L. Herzenberg,et al.  Properties of monoclonal antibodies to mouse Ig allotypes, H-2, and Ia antigens. , 1978, Current topics in microbiology and immunology.