EuroFlow standardization of flow cytometer instrument settings and immunophenotyping protocols

Area of Science:

• Clinical immunology
• Hematology
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Hematological malignancies require accurate immunophenotyping for diagnosis and classification.
• Existing flow cytometry methods lack standardization, leading to inter-laboratory variability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To innovate and standardize 8-color flow cytometry for hematological malignancies.
• To achieve maximally comparable immunophenotyping results across different laboratories.

Main Methods:

• Developed standardized laboratory procedures and antibody panels for 8-color flow cytometry.
• Selected optimal fluorochrome combinations and designed standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Created software tools for evaluating antibody reagents and panels.

Main Results:

• Multicentric evaluation demonstrated high reproducibility with strict adherence to EuroFlow SOPs and panels.
• Developed and validated laboratory protocols and software for standardized immunophenotyping.
• Achieved highly comparable data sets from patient and healthy control samples.

Conclusions:

• Established the first fully standardized 8-color flow cytometry protocols for leukocyte immunophenotyping.
• Enabled integration of comparable data into a single database for improved diagnostics.
• Significantly advanced the standardization of flow cytometry in hematological research and clinical practice.