flow cytometry

The annual international Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) conference is the highlight of the year for scientists in academia, industry, and government focused on leveraging the power of automation to achieve scientific breakthroughs. Here are some highlights of this year’s conference and how Bio-Rad contributed to it.

Manufacturing and high-throughput screening may seem to have very little in common, but they are related at a fundamental level. Both seek to transform a raw material into a finished product, and both struggle with constraints, or bottlenecks, that reduce efficiency. How can we apply the revolutionary 20th century management principles of continuous improvement to 21st century flow cytometry?

Despite the pivotal role of the 488 nm (blue) laser in the rise in popularity of flow cytometry, it experienced somewhat of a fall from grace following the shift to higher usage of the 561 nm (yellow) laser. However, with the advancement of flow cytometry leading to the use of more complex multicolor panels and ever-increasing fluorophore numbers per experiment, the blue laser is starting to make a comeback. Discover how StarBright Blue Dyes can help you make the most out of your 488 nm laser.

In nature, mammalian extracellular vesicles (EVs) are vital for intercellular communication, immune responses, and cell removal. EVs also hold promise in diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine delivery due to their abundance and natural role as carriers. Explore how overcoming challenges in EV purification and precise RNA analysis methods can help unlock their potential applications.

Watch this video to learn about the many benefits of StarBright Dyes — our proprietary fluorescent nanoparticles — and see how they can help you build bigger, better flow cytometry panels with ease. StarBright Dyes have been designed to be stable, with superior brightness, narrow excitation and emission characteristics, and the flexibility to be included in new and existing experiments. They offer improved resolution of specific cell populations and minimized spillover and spreading.

Autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) is an effective treatment strategy for multiple myeloma (MM) but isolating enough hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) for transplantation can be challenging. The selective CXCR4 inhibitor motixafortide has been shown to be a safe and efficacious HSPC mobilization agent in a phase 2 trial when paired with G-CSF. Crees et al. (2023) report the results of the phase 3 trial, in which they used the ZE5 Cell Analyzer to explore motixafortide’s mobilizing effects.

With the advancement of technology, flow cytometers are now able to detect a much greater range of fluorescent dyes, facilitating the analysis of more extensive and complex multicolor immunophenotyping assays. But this has also introduced more pitfalls to navigate during the design of these experiments. Find out how StarBright Dyes can help circumvent many of these issues, enabling consistent and reliable results.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells represent the next generation of therapeutic interventions and are a major advancement in personalized disease treatment. CAR T-cell therapies utilize a patient’s own T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells or other disease-causing cells. Find out how the ZE5 Cell Analyzer has helped overcome some of the challenges associated with development of these powerful new therapies.

Understanding how T cells respond to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is critical in developing long-term therapeutic approaches, as well as helping inform strategies for future pandemics. Learn how one team at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego, California, has been using novel T-cell activation assays to understand how our immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2.

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a critical component of the entire drug discovery process. Flow cytometry is an attractive alternative to imaging and plate reader assays for HTS in drug discovery, due to its increased sensitivity and multiplexing capabilities. The ZE5 Cell Analyzer eliminates pain points that have hindered the full adoption of flow cytometry for drug discovery.