Immunosurgery is a method of removing an external cell layer of an object. Immunosurgery is to expose the specimen to a solution containing antibodies against the object, remove that solution and subsequently expose the object to complement. When only the external layer is marked with antibodies, these cells are the only ones to be destroyed by the complement.
This technique is used to isolate the inner cell mass of mouse blastocysts from the trophoblast layer. It can be used to obtain large quantities of pure inner cell masses in a relatively short period of time.[1]