Cellular phenotyping

Sanquin can measure a variety of leukocytes when you want to define the composition of leukocytes in blood or dissociated tissue samples of patients. Using 13-color flow cytometry, we are able to measure multiple cellular subsets simultaneously, including various types of T cells, B cells and dendritic cells. We can, for instance, define and quantify the number of naive, effector, central memory (CM) and effector memory (EM) cells.

When searching for predictive markers it can be useful to screen for many markers in a small subset of patients, before downscaling to smaller panels when it is known which markers are relevant.

Example

While for many years we could already measure CD4+ T cell/CD8+ T cell ratios to provide information on the status of the immune system of HIV patients, recently it has become possible that  more complex cellular analyses can provide us with valuable information. At Sanquin, a large cohort of samples from patients receiving allogenic stem cell transplantation, is being monitored with the aim to find subsets of peripheral blood cells predicting the development of graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD). With large flow cytometric analyses many cell subsets are charted in order to predict the development of acute GvHD. The longitudinal sampling will enable us to monitor the course of the development of GvHD.

Read more at the pages of Carlijn Voermans and/or Sacha Zeerleder on Sanquin's research pages.