Automation in high-content flow cytometry screening

• Published in: Cytometry. Part A Vol. 75A; no. 9; pp. 789 - 797
• Main Authors: Naumann, U, Wand, M.P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.09.2009
• Subjects: Acute Disease; Automation - instrumentation; Automation - methods; Blood Component Transfusion; Bone Marrow Transplantation; Computational Biology; density curvature; Flow Cytometry - instrumentation; Flow Cytometry - methods; Graft vs Host Disease - blood; Graft vs Host Disease - pathology; high throughput flow cytometry; highest density region; Humans; penalised splines; Reproducibility of Results; Robotics - instrumentation; Robotics - methods; subject specific curves
• ISSN: 1552-4922; 1552-4930; 1552-4930
• DOI: 10.1002/cyto.a.20754

High-content flow cytometric screening (FC-HCS) is a 21st Century technology that combines robotic fluid handling, flow cytometric instrumentation, and bioinformatics software, so that relatively large numbers of flow cytometric samples can be processed and analysed in a short period of time. We revisit a recent application of FC-HCS to the problem of cellular signature definition for acute graft-versus-host-disease. Our focus is on automation of the data processing steps using recent advances in statistical methodology. We demonstrate that effective results, on par with those obtained via manual processing, can be achieved using our automatic techniques. Such automation of FC-HCS has the potential to drastically improve diagnosis and biomarker identification. © 2009 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry