With the ever-increasing understanding of the roles of B cells in immune response and autoimmune pathogenesis, various techniques have been optimized for the detection of IL-10 production in B cells. In this chapter, we describe several commonly used methods for the effective detection of IL-10 in B cells at both mRNA and protein levels, including quantitative PCR analysis, intracellular staining of IL-10 in live B cells by flow cytometry, ELISA for secreted IL-10 detection, and ELISPOT assay for enumerating IL-10-producing B cells. We have further co-stained IL-10 with other cytokines and examined the staining efficiency. Moreover, we provide a detailed protocol for the detection of IL-10-producing B cells in situ by immunofluorescence microscopy. Since emerging evidence has suggested the promising strategy of cell therapy, we also provide a protocol to determine CD19+CD1dhiCD5+ B-cell distribution upon adoptive transfer using tile-scan imaging. Together, the application of the described methods for the detection of IL-10 will facilitate the characterization of B-cell subsets with regulatory functions and enhance our current understanding of the critical roles of B cells in immune response and autoimmune development.
Keywords: Adoptive transfer; IL-10; In situ detection; Regulatory B cells; Tile scan.