To begin, add 50 microliters of anti-mouse CD90.2 microbeads to the isolated lung cells. After vortexing the mixture, incubate it for 10 minutes at four degrees Celsius. Next, place a paramagnetic cell separation column onto a one or four position cell separation magnet.
Position an open 15 milliliter conical tube under each column to capture the flow through. Prime the column with three milliliters of cold sorter buffer, allowing the column to drain by gravity into the conical tube below. After the cells have incubated with the microbeads for 10 minutes, add cold sorter buffer to a volume of one milliliter and transfer the mixture through a 100 micrometer cell strainer placed atop the column.
Collect the column flow through into a fresh 15 milliliter conical tube placed below the column. Once the cell suspension has completely drained through the column, add an additional three milliliters of cold sorter buffer to the original tube and apply it to the column through the mesh before removing the strainer. When the sample has completely drained into the column and no further flow through is exiting, remove the column from the magnet and place it atop a fresh 15 milliliter conical tube.
Add five milliliters of cold sorter buffer to the column. To elute the bound cells, push the column plunger down in one continuous motion, forcing the buffer out of the bottom into a new tube. Centrifuge the eluted samples at 400 x g for five minutes at four degrees Celsius.
Carefully aspirate the supernatant, leaving approximately 100 microliters of the supernatant and the cell pellet. On average, the enrichment process recovers more than 99%of all CD90.2 positive T cells from the lungs with greater than 90%purity.
