The SENSE (Simple prEservatioN of Single cElls) method for cryopreservation enables the generation of single-cell immune profiles from whole blood.

We developed and validated a simple method for viable cryopreservation of whole blood, without any preprocessing, Simple prEservatioN of Single cElls (SENSE), with granulocyte depletion for generating high-quality single-cell profiles. We performed rigorous in-depth characterization of the SENSE method on clinical blood samples and compared it to the conventional multistep density-gradient isolation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) method. The SENSE method is an effective and simple solution for the cryopreservation of blood samples in clinics/labs and single cell profiles generation. To validate and assess suitability of the novel Simple prEservatioN of Single cElls (SENSE) method for cryopreserving whole blood cells, we processed the same patient sample using both traditional density gradient isolation of PBMC method and SENSE method of one-step cryopreservation of whole blood along with granulocyte depletion on the day of single cell assay. Comparative analysis of the single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data form both methods was carried out to assess single cell quality metrics to compare quality of cells and to perform single cell profiling. *** Submitter declares that raw data are not available due to patient privacy concerns. ***