Lessons

Welcome to AABB's Bringing Flow Cytometry to Life: Applications in Cellular Therapies course.

Flow cytometry plays an integral role in the modern laboratory. This rapid, high throughput, multiparameter assay is used to phenotype, characterize, and assess cell function by measuring marker expression on the cell surface and inside cells. It is an important tool that helps to ensure quality, purity, safety and/or potency of products used in cellular therapies and regenerative medicine. Learning how flow cytometry is applied in practice is essential to maximizing its power to collect and interpret data for clinical and research applications.

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Instructions & Additional Information

Understanding of flow cytometry technology, function and processes involved in sample preparation and measurement is important to ensuring consistent and reliable results. This section describes the technology and the ways in which flow cytometry can be optimized for CT products.

Following completion of this section, learners should be able to:

  • Discuss the concept of targeting cell surface markers with antibody-fluorochrome conjugates.
  • Identify and describe the essential technical components of a flow cytometer assay.
  • List the major practical steps in assay setup and performance.
  • Explain how event data are gathered and analyzed.

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Section 1 Foundational Concepts in Flow Cytometry

There are a variety of methods to apply flow cytometry to a range of different CT products. This section presents information on application of current flow cytometric methods to a variety of cell types serving both as current practices information as well as an introduction to methods that may prove useful in thinking about approaches to other flow strategies for future products. This section presents examples of how flow cytometry is used in a variety of applications.

Following completion of this section, learners should be able to:

  • Apply flow cytometry concepts to assays characterizing the following types of CT products:
    • Match cell(s) of interest with corresponding CT product type.
    • Discuss how to optimize a flow panel for staining cells based on cellular therapy product to be evaluated.
    • Identify cell types based on flow cytometric characterization.
    • Describe gating strategies used to distinguish and quantify cell populations of interested on flow cytometer dot plots.
    • Enumerate cell populations of interest based on flow cytometric analysis.

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Section 2: Cellular Therapy Applications of Flow Cytometry

Standardization of flow cytometry testing is very important for delivery of consistent quality CT products particularly with the increase in multi-center trials. With development of some cell types there may not be a “one size fits all” approach, but there are general points to consider in standardization. This section pulls the concepts together testing your knowledge and things to consider in a series of exercises providing feedback.

Following completion of this section, learners should be able to:

  • Recognize cellular and flow cytometric characteristics that are critical to obtaining useful information on understanding the properties by completing exercises. 
  • Formulate an approach to designing flow cytometry panels to assess various cellular therapies. 
  • Describe a general approach to gating strategies.

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Section 3: Review of Concepts: Applying What You Have Learned

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Self-Assessment

In an ongoing effort to provide the highest quality education, we would like to get your feedback. Completion of this evaluation is required to access your continuing education credit certificate.

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Evaluation

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