Course Description:

These are 2-day interactive orientation online courses for those with no/minimal experience in flow cytometry and shall be useful to those working on BD FACSLyric™, BD LSR Fortessa™, BD FACSVerse™, BD Accuri™ C6, BD FACSVia™ , BD FACSCelesta™ and BD FACSCanto™ II flow cytometer platforms. The course is designed to provide a sound understanding of the fundamentals of flow cytometry and routine operational and quality control procedures of a flow cytometer system. Using simple immunophenotyping experiments participants will learn the steps and nuances of lyse-wash and lyse-no wash protocols, instrument setup, compensation, and data analysis. In addition to this, principles of DNA analysis, doublet discrimination and concepts of various research applications of flow cytometry will also be covered. For the participants from a clinical background, the course will be slanted appropriately to cover common clinical flow cytometric applications such as lymphocyte subset enumeration and HLA-B27 assay on BD FACS Canto™ II, BD FACSVia™ and BD FACSLyric™.

Course Description:

This 3-day interactive course is intended for those clinicians and laboratory technologists who are working in the clinical set up. The objective of the course is to provide an understanding and hands-on experience of some of the clinical applications of flow cytometry such as CD4 T Lymphocyte cell enumeration, HLA-B27 assay, Leucocount assay, CD34⁺ Stem cell enumeration, Retic count, PNH, Sepsis, etc. The wet lab will focus on sample preparation, optimizing instrument set up for acquisition, analysis & interpretation.

(A) Leukemia Immunophenotyping

This 3-day advanced course on leukemia/lymphoma immunophenotyping is intended primarily for hematologists/ pathologists who have at least three months of previous flow cytometry experience. The course will cover principles of diagnostic leukemia/lymphoma immunophenotyping along with emerging concepts on standardization of leukemia flow cytometry (EuroFlow™ approach and BD OneFlow™ Assay) and MRD analysis.

(B) Multicolor flow cytometry

This 3-day advanced course is intended for those researchers/clinicians who have at least three months of previous flow cytometry experience on a BD digital flow cytometer platform. The objective of the course is to provide a thorough understanding of variables involved in running a multicolor flow cytometry experiment right from the instrument performance and setup, panel design, choice of controls to data acquisition and analysis. The wet lab will focus on optimizing instrument setup, antibody titration and compensation controls.

(C) Sorting

This 2-day advanced course is intended for those researchers/clinicians who have at least three months of previous flow cytometry experience on a BD digital flow cytometer platform. The objective of the course is to provide an understanding of sorting of biological cells and designing of functional assays with sorted cells. The wet lab will focus mainly on optimizing instrument setup, drop delay, analysis of cells and sorting of beads and blood cells.

This 3-day course will be designed to provide a complete exposure of theoretical and practical aspects of desired applications of flow cytometry as per participants, along with routine operational and quality control procedures of a flow cytometer system.