As my project, I am looking for invading lymphocytes to tumour microenvironment. In this photo you can see a phase seperation (density centrifugation, or with a common name ficoll-hypaque) of whole blood. The principle underlies this technique is actually very simple. Every cell in the blood has different density, so we’re using a clear liquid which is called “Lymphocyte Seperation Medium (LSM)” (the most famous brand is ficoll-hypaque, so a lot of scientist can call this as Ficoll). LSM has a density at 1.077g/ml, so if you centrifuge your whole blood with LSM correctly, you will have a similar seperation like this. Very bottom red phase is erythrocytes and granulocytes (eosinophils, neutrophils etc). At the top of red phase, there is our LSM (clear phase). Next to LSM phase, we have a cloudy phase, which is consisted of “mononucleated cells” (which are basically lymphocytes, NKs and monocytes) which I need. The last red portion is just plasma and platelets, which is basically liquid waste for me.
