Determining Biological Activity of Nanoparticles as Measured by Flow Cytometry

Flow cytometry is a powerful tool to evaluate cellular responses at the single cell level. Applicability to evaluating biological activity of in vitro and in vivo exposure to compounds is limited only by the number of fluorochrome emission spectra a particular instrument can detect and the availability of antibodies specific for a particular cellular protein. Here, I describe the general method considerations and provide an example experimental design for utilizing flow cytometry to evaluate the biological activity of nanoparticles on primary murine immune cells.