Detection of structural chromosome aberrations in immunophenotyped mitoses.

The recently developed MAC (morphology-antibody-chromosome) method allows simultaneous immunophenotype and karyotype analysis in the same cell. To date, application of this new method has been hampered by the poor quality of chromosome banding. In this paper, we describe a modified simultaneous immunofluorescence and Q-banding technique, as well as a new combination of immunohistochemical and fluorescent R-banding methods. By further modifying the MAC method, we were able not only to achieve unequivocal results with weakly expressed antigens but also to improve the quality of the banding techniques, so that even structural chromosome abnormalities were well defined.