Possibilities of biological control of extracorporeal photochemotherapy

The results of the determination of levels of apoptosis in vitro in lymphocytes during the procedures of extracorporeal photochemotherapy (extracorporeal photopheresis) using flow cytometry are described. It was found that carrying out extracorporeal photopheresis does not have a significant effect on the viability of cells immediately after the procedures. Thus, the relative content of living cells in the samples after isolation of the mononuclear fraction of peripheral blood did not differ from both samples prepared for photopheresis and samples after this procedure. It should be noted that carrying out extracorporeal photopheresis does not lead to rapid cell death. At the same time, the level of living lymphocytes at the beginning of the experiment averaged about 90%, while the protocol used to extract the mononuclear fraction of peripheral blood cells and further manipulations with them in vitro allowed increasing the percentage of living cells in the samples to90% or more. An increase in the level of cells in the early stages of apoptosis occurs already in the first day after the beginning of the experiment, which is confirmed by the data of other researchers indicating that there are significant differences in the viability of cells with an initial point in the interval of 20-24 h in vitro incubation. The launch of the processes of programmed cell death in the case of own experiments was not related to the preparation of samples for extracorporeal photopheresis (as evidenced by the absence of significant differences between freshly isolated lymphocytes and samples prepared for the procedure), but with the procedure of photopheresis itself.