Question: Is flow sorting required for Barcode Enabled Antigen Mapping (BEAM) experiments? Can bead-based enrichment be performed instead?
Answer: Given that antigen-specific B or T cells are rare, it is essential to perform flow sorting to enrich these cells before using them as input into the 5’v2 assay.
We do not support or recommend using anti-PE microbeads to enrich for antigen-positive cells. During product development, we tested using anti-PE microbeads instead of flow sorting and found that data quality was suboptimal.
If the starting percentage of B or T cells in the sample is low, bead-based pre-enrichment using negative selection kits may be performed upstream of BEAM labeling and flow sorting. See: Is bead-based pre-enrichment of B or T cells recommended for BEAM?
Products: Single Cell Immune Profiling, Barcode Enabled Antigen Mapping (BEAM)