This local southern California flow cytometry meeting began with classes offered by FloCyte and ExCyte the day before the meeting. The FloCyte class was on compensation and multiparameter strategies, while ExCyte offered a class on advanced data analysis.
The talks began on April 23, 2015 with an intriguing look at how NK cells can be used to treat B cell ALL, whereas the next talk was about generating NK T cells by inducing hematopoietic stem cells. A vendor talk from ThermoFisher focused on their acoustic flow cytometer, the Attune NxT. After a coffee break and poster session, a post-doc from UCSD talked about identifying tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) using RNA and IC protein flow cytometry with the Affymetrix/eBioscience Prime flow technology. A grad student from City of Hope talked about immune regulation with microRNAs and its involvement in cancer. After a vendor introduction of the new CytoFlex cytometer by Beckman Coulter, there was a wonderful lunch provided and some great prizes from the Bronze vendors. After lunch was a talk about a very exciting new HTS screening platform by GNF. It is fully automated and allows screening of compounds 24/7. DeNovo Software gave an update on their new version of FCS Express before a coffee break and the SoCal Flow business meeting asking the group about their preferences as to where the SoCal meeting should be held next so as to be the most beneficial to the whole SoCal community. The last talk of the day was from Dr. Phillip McCoy from the NIH. He talked about using flow cytometry in biomarker discovery and high dimensional immunophenotyping with a platform called comprehensive leukocyte immunophenotyping (CLIP). It uses computer algorithms to predict disease states using 14 tube panels of 15 colors each. This technique was able to predict which markers were important in monitoring disease in patients. After happy hour and poster presentation, there was a fantastic dinner where everyone got to relax and enjoy the company of their peers.
Day 2 started with a vendor talk from BD on combining intracellular staining into multicolor experiments. An assistant professor at USC then talked about the coordination of hematopoietic stem cells in mouse models. Matt Alexander from BioRad introduced their new sorter, the S3e before the coffee break. A grad student from UCI talked about his research on markers of long-term hematopoietic stem cells. Pat Simms from Loyola University then talked about using imaging flow cytometry to study exosomes. Erica Stone from Wistar gave an interesting talk about the differentiation of T helper cells with the transcription factor FOXO1 before the lunch break. After another great lunch, a scientist from UCI talked about the origins of hematopoietic stem cells in the embryo. A very interesting topic was explored by a bioinformatics analyst at the Craig Venter Institute on how to view high complexity flow cytometry data. The last talk of the day was from Cell Signaling about using flow cytometry to understand signaling pathways in different diseases.
This was a great program put together by the SoCal Flow Cytometry Association. It was a well coordinated meeting with many interesting talks about how flow cytometry is helping in drug discovery and in understanding how different cell types are involved in disease.
It was great to see such a big turnout and I am looking forward to next year’s meeting.