We were excited to attend the American Society of Hematology meeting this month in Atlanta. Despite the conference beginning with the arrival of an unexpected winter storm, many leading scientists and clinicians congregated to present and discuss cutting-edge research in hematology.

The Cytobank platform was used by many who attended and presented and we were proud to contribute to these scientific advances. Highlights for us were:

1. A multiparametric approach, “pharmacoscopy:” (a single-cell drug-response profiling approach that utilizes IF, automated microscopy, and image analysis, as detailed by Vladimer, Snijder et al., Nat. Chem. Biol. 2017) identified targetable drug pathways in CLL patients. Interestingly, the way that these authors use image morphology to quantify cell death is similar to what Ross Marklein from the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) presented at BMES using Cytobank on imaging morphology data. In our consulting services, we’re excited to work with our customers on projects that integrate multiple data types, such as this work presented at ASH.
2. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and its application in the clinic today was widely discussed. Similar to high dimensional cytometry analyses, developing reproducible and efficient bioinformatics analysis pipelines was identified as a major challenge to dissecting the large volume of data generated by NGS. During the late breaking abstract session, Dr. Tim Grob, presented data from a large prospective clinical trial demonstrating that NGS MRD detection can predict relapse and survival in newly diagnosed AML.

   

    

3.  Cytobank in action: Numerous posters and presentations used Cytobank to investigate immune system response to cancer, dysplasia, and other blood disorders. Some examples include:

Tanaya Shree, Stanford University Medical Center, presenting “Altered Peripheral Immune Phenotypes in Mantle Cell Lymphoma Survivors”. Here, CITRUS helped identify alterations of T cell subsets on MCL PBMC samples as compared to healthy donor samples.

Bita Sahaf: “Ibrutinib Inhibits cGVHD Pathogenic Pre-Germinal center B-cells and Follicular Helper Cells While Preserving Immune Memory and Th1 T-cells”

Thomas Coats: “Neoantigens in MDS Are Associated with Two Novel CD4+ T Cell Subsets and Improved Overall Survival”

Learn more about how you can:

• Automate single-cell biomarker discovery with CITRUS
• Use viSNE to compare samples in clinical studies
• Work with our services team on your data analysis projects