Advancing Disease Research and Drug Development with Advanced Flow Cytometry

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Tamlyn Oliver: Hi everyone, welcome to Biocompare’s Tech Insights Podcast, where we speak to scientific experts about new technology that can help advance your research. I’m Tamlyn Oliver, Managing Editor of Biocompare. Today’s guest is Nina Senutovitch, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Sartorius. She’s going to tell us more about the iQue, an advanced flow cytometry platform. Thanks for joining us, Nina.

Nina Senutovitch: Hi, thank you Tamlyn.

Tamlyn Oliver: My first question is, how is the iQue advanced flow cytometry platform different from traditional flow?

Nina Senutovitch: So, the iQue platform is built on novel technology that allows just a few microliters of sample to be analyzed rapidly and the data to be collected for immediate analysis with onboard software. This is a very useful tool in the development of a lot of therapies, particularly in immune-oncology. Because for example, the iQue can monitor which T cells are activated and furthermore, can give information as to whether or not the T cells are in an early, middle or late stage of activation. And it’s able to do this by gathering amino phenotyping data, cell health and viability data as well as cytokine measurements all from a single well. The integrated software then allows a scientist the ability to instantly analyze the data on a plate level without having to do an exporting to third-party software, which can be tedious and tine consuming.

Tamlyn Oliver: Okay, thanks for that explanation. The next question is T cell-based therapeutics are showing great promise in the clinic for multiple pathologies. How can advanced flow cytometry further T cell research?

Nina Senutovitch: So, advanced flow cytometry in the iQue is a very helpful tool for studying a lot of variance of T cell dynamics. If for example, you want to monitor which T cells become induced and can become cytotoxic, therefore, they can kill for example a target tumor cell or a virally infected cell, which might be helpful during the development of CAR T therapies it’s also a very useful platform for determining conditions that might induce T cell exhaustion, which is where a subset of T cells become functionally inactive. And it’s of course, a huge benefit for scientists to be able to quickly gather and analyze this data and then visualize it using dynamic visualization tools that are designed to process entire plates of data, and even compare plates of data, while being able to preserve a previous patient sample because the iQue has no dead volume and can use just a few microliters for detection.

Tamlyn Oliver: Okay, thank you. And finally, with COVID top of mind lately, I need to ask you, is it also possibly for the iQue3 platform to assist in COVID-19 related research?

Nina Senutovitch: Absolutely that’s a question that’s on everybody’s mind right now, and iQue can give us a lot of insight into the biology, therapeutics and even vaccine development, to fight COVID-19. So, for example, we know that in COVID-19 infection, there tends to be in certain patients a large amount of inflammatory cytokines that are secreted. This is often known as a cytokine storm and that can be correlated to the severity of the infection. So, we know it’s important to monitor and quantitate cytokines such as interferon-gamma and IL-6 among others. The iQue allows scientists the ability to multiplex those tests for cytokines and chemokines of interest, taken either from human serum or from in-vitro samples, and then analyze them using our integrated software in order to get results as soon as possible. The iQue is also a very helpful tool when we’re considering other elements to fight COVID infection, such as vaccine development, because it allows for very rapid screening for example, of antigenic targets where you might need to do methods such as viral epitope mapping. And because we know additionally, that COVID-19 infection tends to alter T cell population that for those individuals who are able to successfully mount an immune response to COVID-19, there is some role for cytotoxic T cell, it’s important to be able to monitor the dynamics of that T cell characterization over days and weeks, which is something that the iQue is very helpful for. And finally, when we’re thinking about the development of different types of therapeutics to fight COVID-19 infection, the iQue is very helpful during drug and antibody discovery because it allows scientists to do high-throughput in miniaturized assays both at a screening stage and at a later characterization stage. So, for example, if we’re interested in developing antibodies to fight COVID-19 or to prevent infection, the iQue can very rapidly perform a series of antibody ligand binding screenings that can allow you identify candidate antibodies of interest. And as you further characterize those antibodies and want to move into a production stage so you can make more of them, the iQue allows you to identify the best clones to carry forward, because it allows you to simultaneously measure which of those cells are healthy, are proliferate and also are able to produce a robust antibody titer. And these are just some of the ways that the iQue can be helpful in COVID-19 infection, as well as other areas that scientists are actively pursuing right now.

Tamlyn Oliver: Thanks Nina, for explaining the benefits of the iQue and its applications in research as well as therapeutic and vaccine development. For a more in-depth description of the iQue, an advanced flow cytometry platform developed by Sartorius, please read the related article “Streamlining Research Workflows with Advanced Flow Cytometry.” And thanks so much or listening. For more information on products, technologies and the latest scientific advancements, please visit Biocompare.com, and have a great day.