A simple and efficient method for the preparation of live leukocytes from peripheral blood using the LeukoCatchTM system

Leukocytes from peripheral blood (PB) are of great value for diagnosis as well as basic and clinical research. However, no easy, centrifugation-free method is available for the isolation of live leukocytes from blood. We here develop a simple and quick method for the purification of viable leukocytes from whole blood using novel tools, named tLeukoCatch (tip-type) or sLeukoCatch (syringe-type), which is equipped with three Pall filter layers and captures leukocytes but not red blood cells (RBCs) in whole blood. Indeed, we showed that several million leukocytes per mL (~35% of the recovery rate) were captured and eluted from whole blood. The number of contaminant RBCs decreased from several million to several thousand. When mouse blood was hemolysed, almost all of the lysed RBC fragments were removed by passage through sLeukoCatch. Optical microscopic observation confirmed that the recovered leukocytes were sufficiently healthy to respond to growth stimuli. Efficient leukocyte recovery was also confirmed for hemolysed human blood. These results suggest that the LeukoCatch system is useful for bedside diagnosis and basic research with blood samples.