Proliferation Marker

Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) is a thymidine analog and is specifically incor-porated into DNA during DNA synthesis. Anti-bromodeoxyuridine monoclonal antibody is used to identify cells that have incorporated BrdU. This immunological detection scheme has several advantages over the use of radioactive thymidine incorporation for identifying cells under-going replication. Labeling and detection can be performed the same day instead of waiting several days, as required for autoradiography of tritium-labeled cells, and the necessity of using multiple specimens for obtaining the optimal exposure time is eliminated. In addition, anti-bromodeoxyuridine staining with flow cytometric analysis allows multiple parameters to be evaluated simultaneously. Anti-bromodeoxyuridine monoclonal antibody has been used for identi-fying proliferating cells in blood (Campana et al., 1988), tissues (Schutte et al., 1987; Hayashi, et al., 1988), tumors (Hoshino et al., 1986; Morstyn et al., 1983), as well as for determining plasma cell labeling indices (Greipp et al., 1985).