Relevance of Antibody Validation for Flow Cytometry

Antibody reagents are the key components of multiparametric flow cytometry analysis. Their quality performance is an absolute requirement for reproducible flow cytometry experiments. While there is an enormous body of antibody reagents available, there is still a lack of consensus about which criteria should be evaluated to select antibody reagents with the proper performance, how to validate antibody reagents for flow cytometry, and how to interpret the validation results. The achievements of cytometry moved the field to a higher number of measured parameters, large data sets, and computational data analysis approaches. These advancements pose an increased demand for antibody reagent performance quality. This review summarizes the codevelopment of cytometry, antibody development, and validation strategies. It discusses the diverse issues of the specificity, cross‐reactivity, epitope, titration, and reproducibility features of antibody reagents, and this review discusses the validation principles and methods that are currently available and those that are emerging. We argue that significant efforts should be invested by antibody users, developers, manufacturers, and publishers to increase the quality and reproducibility of published studies. More validation data should be presented by all stakeholders; however, the data should be presented in sufficient experimental detail to foster reproducibility, and community effort shall lead to the public availability of large data sets that can serve as a benchmark for antibody performance. © 2019 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry