BD Biosciences Celebrates 50 Years of Innovation and Enabling Deeper Insights in Immunology at IMMUNOLOGY2024™
May 24, 2024
As the cool winds from Lake Michigan welcomed distinguished career immunologists, spirited scientists, and frenetic students and post-docs from around the world, the city of Chicago rose to the occasion to host the annual scientific meeting of the American Association of Immunologists, IMMUNOLOGY2024™. With packed sessions comprising participants around the world, the conference did not disappoint in its promise of delivering outstanding scientific exchange, introducing new and exciting products using breakthrough technologies and recognizing excellence in the field of immunology.
A walk through the history of flow cytometry and path of immunology discovery, and back to the future with BD Biosciences
For BD Biosciences, it was an exceptionally momentous occasion as it proudly celebrated the 50th anniversary of introducing the first commercial flow cytometer which began the journey of offering limitless possibilities for scientists to change the landscape of immunology and cell biology forever. Not only did BD Biosciences kickoff the fluorescence-activated flow cytometry industry, but it continues to introduce cutting-edge innovations that enable immunologists to push the boundaries of science. The BD Biosciences booth encapsulated the idea of how the company’s journey was intrinsically intertwined with the progress and advancements made in flow cytometry.
The BD Biosciences booth – a flow cytometry museum of sorts – swarmed with scientists eager to witness and be part of this history. Attendees were fascinated by one of the original flow cytometers, the BD® FACS 440 System that was introduced in the 1980s. With mechanical parts, some attendees began to check out how the electronics worked in the past. They took “selfies” with it along with the image of the father of modern flow cytometry, Leonard Herzenberg shown in the background. The BD Biosciences team happily took Polaroid™ pictures of attendees to memorialize the time!
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As they traversed through the path of immunology, the audience encountered arrays of fluorophores as they were discovered, learned how flow cytometry panels grew in size and complexity with the passage of time and witnessed the technological breakthroughs that made them possible. They walked into the present day, with the world’s first image-enabled high-speed cell spectral cell sorter, the BD FACSDiscover™ S8 System proudly on display. But time didn’t stop there: next, they entered into the future with the system’s newest advancements and how it could be paired with the BD Rhapsody™ HT Xpress System to resolve their discoveries at a single-cell level. Beginners and veterans alike loved looking at the timeline of discoveries that made the flow cytometry journey over the years.
A wide range of new products to tackle current challenges and open up endless possibilities for spectral flow cytometry and single-cell multiomics
BD Biosciences showcased two new additions to the family of BD Horizon RealYellow™ and BD Horizon RealBlue™ Reagents, which help in minimizing cross-laser excitation on the blue and yellow-green lasers. These dyes can be paired with the real-time imaging-enabled spectral flow cytometer, the BD FACSDiscover™ S8 Cell Sorter, to derive greater insights and unlock new discoveries.
The booth highlighted its complete portfolio of single-cell multiomics solutions featuring newly launched products, such as the BD® OMICS-Guard Sample Preservation Buffer for sample preservation, BD Rhapsody™ ATAC-Seq Assays for epigenomics studies and BD Rhapsody™ TCR/BCR Next Multiomic Assays for advanced immune profiling, which can help accelerate time to insight at the single-cell level.
The new product journey ended with the latest plug-ins available for revealing insights from data with FlowJo™ Software v10 and BD® Research Cloud, a transformational ecosystem for flow cytometry experiments that helps collaboration on panel design.
Flow cytometry education through session workshops
BD Biosciences conducted two packed workshops – one on improving resolution and unveiling biology with spectral flow cytometry and the other on parsing high-parameter data using FlowJo™ Software using the example of the recently published 50-color panel. In the first workshop, Bob Balderas, VP of biological sciences, shared insights drawn from 50 years of innovation in flow cytometry and explained how the choices of available fluorochromes impact the biological resolution when making decisions around panel design and experimental conditions. In the second workshop, John Quinn, director of science and product development, discussed some tips, tricks and tools for analyzing complex high-parameter data. He introduced features of FlowJo™ Software such as scaling, compensation options and automated clean-up and illustrated how they can be used to analyze high-parameter data such as that generated in the recent 50-color panel publication by Konecny et al. He also elaborated on the application of a high-dimensional workflow centered around the T-rex algorithm for identifying populations of interest and automated population naming.
No dearth of fun with games to play (and geek out with) and candies to sort (and eat) at the BD Booth
The scientists who came into the BD Biosciences booth are sure to have left with their intellectual curiosity satisfied. They were challenged with playing a flow cytometry timeline guessing game where they had to guess the timeline of important discoveries in immunology. “What were the only two dyes available for flow cytometry in the 1970s?”; “When were the 2, 8, 12, 30 and 50-color panels published” were some of the timeline questions they had to tackle. What better challenge could the scientists have asked for? Needless to say, they had loads of fun.
BD Horizon™ BV421 Fluorophore wins the popularity contest as the favorite BD Biosciences fluorochrome!
Voting for their favorite fluorochrome by adding the appropriately colored candy to glass jars (as well as to their stomachs), the audience had some additional fun at the booth. The “winner dye” was determined by the colored candy that had the maximum count. By popular vote, the BD Horizon™ BV421 Fluorophore was voted the most favored BD fluorochrome. Other fan favorites were APC and BD Horizon RealBlue™ 780 Reagent/PE-Cy7.
Another popular spot was the fluorochrome performance guide magnet. The little magnet, which contained a fluorochrome performance chart and fluorochrome antigen pairing guide showing resolution versus spillover information for various dyes, was viewed as a useful tool and a neat lab companion and was a hit among attendees. If you missed collecting the magnet at the conference, the fluorochrome performance chart can be downloaded.
A special event just to celebrate our customers
At the BD Biosciences customer event, “An evening of breakthroughs,” attendees were able to have deep discussions to learn about the new dye color options of the BD Horizon RealYellow™ and BD Horizon RealBlue™ Reagents as well as new BD Biosciences offerings of antibodies for immunometabolism, immunotherapy and biosimilar research. They also got a glimpse of the capabilities of the new FlowJo™ Software v10 plugins and the new launches to enable efficient single-cell multiomics research, from sample preservation tools such as the BD® OMICS-Guard Sample Preservation Buffer to new assays for TCR/BCR immunophenotyping, CITE-seq and epigenomic analysis.
AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award
In keeping with years of tradition of recognizing an early career investigator who has made noteworthy early-career achievements in the field of immunology, the 2024 joint AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award was bestowed on Dr. Gabriel D Victora from Rockefeller University for noteworthy early career achievement in immunology research.
Posters presented by BD Biosciences
In addition to the two workshops, seven scientific posters were presented on varied topics ranging from the molecular mechanisms involved in T-cell receptor (TCR)-dependent metabolic switch into aerobic glycolysis to how advancements in research grade biosimilars enable the study of therapeutic antibodies and the detection of lipid nanoparticles phagocytosed by antigen-presenting cells using imaging flow cytometry. A few of those posters also demonstrated new applications in single-cell multiomics, such as using single cell CITE-seq and high-parameter flow cytometry to characterize human regulatory T cells and deeper immune cell characterization using a single-cell full-length TCR/BCR profiling assay with high sensitivity and CITE-seq compatibility.
Download posters presented at IMMUNOLOGY2024™
