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Discover a comprehensive portfolio of reagents designed to support your workflow from sample preparation to biological insight. Our portfolio includes conjugated antibodies, preconfigured multicolor panels, viability and functional reagents, buffers and controls—delivering reliable performance across a wide range of applications, from cell characterization and immunophenotyping to functional studies and advanced multicolor analysis.
Find High-Performing Antibodies and Reagents for all Stages of the Flow Cytometry Workflow
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A comprehensive antibody portfolio featuring validated clones and fluorochrome conjugates supported by rigorous development to deliver flexibility and performance for multicolor flow cytometry | Pre-built panels designed to streamline detection of common immunological cell populations | Custom flow cytometry panel, antibody conjugation and bulk ordering to expand your experimental design options and meet your needs | Solutions to help streamline workflows and ensure reliable flow cytometry data, from sample preparation to quality control | Reagents to monitor apoptosis and viability, and track cell proliferation | Soluble protein quantification with Cytometric Bead Array solutions, ELISA and ELISPOT |
Designing a Flow Cytometry Panel?
Successful multicolor flow cytometry depends on thoughtful panel design. Selecting the right fluorochrome-marker combinations can help maximize resolution, minimize spillover and improve data quality. Consider factors such as antigen density, fluorochrome brightness, co-expression patterns and instrument configuration when building your panel.
Explore these resources to support your panel design workflow:
- Panel Design Resource Center
Learn the key principles of multicolor panel development, from defining experimental objectives to selecting optimal fluorochromes and controls.
- BD® Spectrum Viewer | Spectral Analyzer
Visualize and compare fluorochrome emission profiles to assess compatibility with your flow cytometer and optimize panel performance.
- Fluorochrome Performance Guide
Interpret fluorochrome resolution and cross-laser spillover to make informed reagent selections and simplify panel design.
Need help designing your panel? Contact us.
Featured Products
- BD Horizon™ Real Dyes
Fluorochromes engineered for minimal cross-laser excitation and reduced spectral complexity.
- BD Horizon Brilliant™ Violet and UV Dyes
Bright family of dyes spanning UV, violet and blue laser configurations.
- BD Horizon™ Brilliant Stain Buffer
Buffer that reduces dye-dye interactions and minimizes staining artifacts when using multiple BD Horizon Brilliant™ Polymer Dyes.
- Compensation Beads
Single-color controls for compensation and spectral unmixing, especially helpful when working with rare populations and precious samples.
- BD Pharmingen™ Transcription Factor Buffer Set
Buffers optimized for intracellular staining of transcription factors and nuclear targets, enabling reliable identification and characterization of key immune cell subsets, including regulatory T cells and helper T-cell populations.
- BD Horizon™ Human T Cell Backbone Panel
Optimized configuration of core markers specifically designed to expand your research with recommended fluorochrome drop-ins, enabling flexibility in panel design without compromising resolution.
Perform Flow Cytometry with Confidence
From panel development to data analysis, confidence in your results depends on the quality and consistency of your reagents. BD Biosciences applies manufacturing and quality control processes to help ensure reliable performance across a broad portfolio of flow cytometry reagents.
FAQs
- What flow cytometry reagents are needed for a multicolor experiment?
A typical multicolor flow cytometry workflow may require fluorochrome-conjugated antibodies, viability dyes, compensation controls, staining buffers, fixation and permeabilization reagents, and sample preparation buffers. The reagents required depend on the study objective, cell type, target markers and instrument configuration.
- How do I choose reagents for a multicolor flow cytometry panel?
Reagent selection should consider antigen density, marker co-expression, fluorochrome brightness, spectral overlap, and the instrument configuration, including lasers and detectors and filters. In general, brighter fluorochromes (for example: BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dyes) are best paired with low-density or variably expressed markers, while less bright fluorochromes are often suitable for highly expressed lineage markers. When panel complexity is a concern, selecting fluorochromes with low spillover (for example, BD Horizon™ Real Dyes) can help improve population resolution and simplify panel design. Selecting fluorochromes with low spillover (for example: BD Horizon™ Real Dyes) can minimize issues with spectral overlap. Finally, fluorochrome selection should always be evaluated in the context of your instrument's available lasers, detectors, and filters. The BD® Spectrum Viewer, the Panel Design Resource Center and the Fluorochrome Performance Guide can help you create a specific panel configuration.
Contact us for help with building your panel.
- What are compensation beads used for in flow cytometry?
Compensation beads or particles are used to generate single-color controls for compensation and spectral unmixing. They provide a surrogate system for cells by binding antibodies to their surface, generating bright positive and negative populations that can be used to measure fluorochrome spillover and calculate compensation. Compensation beads are particularly useful when cell samples are limited, when target expression varies between samples or when suitable biological controls are unavailable. Explore our compensation beads.
- What are BD Horizon™ Real Dyes?
BD Horizon™ Real Dyes are a family of fluorochromes engineered to simplify flow cytometry panel design through minimal cross-laser excitation, reduced spectral complexity and compatibility with both conventional and spectral flow cytometers. The BD Horizon™ Real Dye portfolio includes RealBlue™ (RB), RealViolet™ (RV), RealYellow™ (RY) and RealRed™ (RR) Fluorochromes. Researchers commonly refer to these reagents using abbreviations such as RB, RV, RY and RR reagents or by specific fluorochrome names, such as RV544, RV828, RB545, RB824, RY586, RY775 and RR688. These dyes are designed to expand panel design flexibility while helping improve marker resolution and reduce panel complexity in multicolor flow cytometry experiments.
- When should I use fixation and permeabilization buffers?
Fixation and permeabilization reagents are used to detect intracellular targets such as cytokines, transcription factors and signaling molecules. Because different intracellular applications have unique requirements, specialized buffer systems are often needed for optimal staining of cytoplasmic or nuclear proteins. BD Biosciences intracellular staining buffers are designed for these applications, and BD Horizon™ Real Dyes have been tested for compatibility with BD fixation and permeabilization buffer systems to support reliable multicolor flow cytometry performance.
- Why should I choose BD flow cytometry reagents?
High-quality reagents are critical for achieving clear population resolution, reliable data interpretation and reproducible results in flow cytometry. Poor-quality reagents can lead to misinterpretation of results. BD Biosciences antibodies and reagents adhere to strict quality control SOPs and guidelines to ensure lot-to-lot consistency, which is critical for obtaining consistent and reproducible results. Our antibodies are validated and application-specific information is provided when performance has been confirmed across multiple applications. In addition, our flow cytometry reagents are titrated using relevant positive and/or negative cell populations to help ensure consistent staining performance and reproducible results.
- Can BD Biosciences reagents be used on different flow cytometers?
Yes, our reagents are designed to be compatible with a wide range of flow cytometers from multiple manufacturers, including spectral and conventional systems. Researchers should verify fluorochrome compatibility with their instrument configuration when designing experiments.
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