A pilot study evaluating the utility of commercially available antibodies for flow cytometric analysis of Panthera species lymphocytes

BACKGROUND: The immune response against tuberculosis in lions is still poorly defined and our understanding is hampered by the lack of lion specific reagents. The process for producing antibodies against a specific antigen is laborious and not available to many research laboratories. As the search for antibody cross-reactivity is an important strategy for immunological studies in veterinary medicine, we have investigated the use of commercially available antibodies to characterize T cell subsets in African lions (Panthera leo). RESULTS: Commercially available antibodies were screened and investigated the influence of two different sample processing methods, as well as the effect of time delay on cell surface marker expression on lion lymphocytes. Using commercially available antibodies, we were able to identify CD4(+), CD5(+), CD8(+), CD14(+), CD25(+), CD44(+) and CD45(+) T lymphocytes in samples obtained by density gradient centrifugation as well as red cell lysis of lion whole blood. Two distinct lymphocyte populations, which differed in size and phenotype, were observed in the samples processed by density gradient centrifugation. CONCLUSION: Commercially available antibodies are able to differentiate between T lymphocyte subsets including immune effector cells in African lion whole blood, and possibly give insight into unique specie phenotypes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12917-018-1717-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.