Determination of lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes in single lymphocytes from normal and leukemia cell lines

This work demonstrates that our previously developed technique for single-erythrocyte analysis by capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection (CE-LIF) can be applied to study individual lymphocytes, with some modification in the cell lysing procedure. A tesla coil was shown to be capable of lysing the lymphocyte cells inside the capillary. The electromagnetic field induced by the tesla coil was believed to be responsible for breaking the cell membrane. The lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) isoenzyme activities and the relative ratios between different LDH isoenzymes were measured for normal lymphocytes as well as B-type and T-type acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells. Both the LDH activity and the isoenzyme ratios show large variations among individual cells. The former is expected due to variations in cell size. The latter implies that single-cell measurements are less useful than the average values over a cell population as markers for leukemia.