Procedures for Flow Cytometry‐Based Sorting of Unfixed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) Infected Cells and Other Infectious Agents

Reifel, Kristen M.; Swan, Brandon K.; Jellison, Evan R.; Ambrozak, David; Baijer, Jan; Nguyen, Richard; Monard, Simon; Lyon, Geoffrey; Fontes, Benjamin; Perfetto, Stephen P.

In response to the recent COVID‐19 pandemic, many laboratories are involved in research supporting SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine development and clinical trials. Flow cytometry laboratories will be responsible for a large part of this effort by sorting unfixed antigen‐specific lymphocytes. Therefore, it is critical and timely that we have an understanding of risk assessment and established procedures of infectious cell sorting. Here we present procedures covering the biosafety aspects of sorting unfixed SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected cells and other infectious agents of similar risk level. These procedures follow the ISAC Biosafety Committee guidelines and were recently approved by the National Institutes of Health Institutional Biosafety Committee for sorting SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected cells. © 2020 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry