A NOVEL TECHNIQUE FOR STUDYING THE ADHERENCE OF CANDIDA-ALBICANS TO HEP-2 CELLS

Factors which affected the adherence of the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans to HEp-2 cells were investigated. In order to study this phenomenon a novel means of isolating HEp-2 cells with adherent Candida from mixtures of cells was developed. This involved attaching a magnetic bead, with the aid of an antibody, to the surface of the epithelial cell. Initial studies revealed that individual beads could be attached to approximately 70% of HEp-2 cells by varying the original bead to cell ratio. Such bead-HEp-2 complexes could subsequently be collected in a magnetic field. The use of this method for isolating HEp-2 cells with adherent yeast obviated a number of the problems associated with the more conventionally employed technique of differential filtration. A variety of factors were identified as affecting the extent of Candida-HEp-2 adherence and these included the incubation temperature, the phase of yeast cell growth and the carbon source upon which the yeast was grown.