An oldie but goldie, in 2014 Chauvat et al. (Hum Vaccin Immunother, 2014) demonstrated the superior sensitivity of FluoroSpot in an elegant experiment:
Increasing numbers of transfected CHO cells constitutively secreting IL-10 and IFN-γ were mixed with non-transfected cells and analysed by FluoroSpot and intracellular flow cytometry. FluoroSpot assay detected cytokine-secreting cells even when as few as 10 transfected cells were added to the cell suspension. In contrast, at least 5 000 transfected cells were required to detect the cytokines by flow cytometry.
Thus, in the hands of the authors and in the present context, FluoroSpot demonstrated to be 500 times more sensitive than intracellular flow cytometry.
Please consult the paper for full details on the study.
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