A 14 colour antibody panel: developing a tool and demonstrating a process
Posted 7th June 2019 by Joshua Sewell
One of the frustrations I have with Flow Cytometry is when companies present their amazing new findings at conferences, and it’s quite often about TMB cells. In my case, I work on these cells perhaps 20% of the time. The rest of the time I work on cells from other parts of the human body – bone marrow, lung, bronchoalveolar lavage, spleen – and in diverse animals such as mice, rats, and even sparrow, chicken, and mosquito.
Determining the fate of cells with Flow Cytometry
Posted 31st May 2019 by Joshua Sewell
The ability to measure multiple forms of cell death simultaneously represents a significant development for such techniques. I have been using antibodies and more specific forms of dyes to identify mitochondrial activity and reactive oxygen in roughly fifty populations, whereas normally it would only be able to measure one at a time. I will be discussing this work at the Flow Cytometry Congress, and it could prove enormously beneficial to drug and immunotherapy development.
The Challenge of Accurately Performing Skin Microbiome Metagenomic Studies
Posted 27th November 2017 by Jane Williams
The human skin is densely colonised with a complex microbial community (1). Microbes are a part of the skin barrier that, combined with innate immunity, keeps the balance essential to maintaining healthy skin (2). Recent and independent research projects strongly suggested that human skin microbiota is of a major importance for human health and could be targeted to improve the skin health.
Cancer Therapy in the Genomic Era: Barriers and Distractions
Posted 20th November 2017 by Jane Williams
Recent step change advances in sequencing technologies have delivered a near-complete lexicon of genomic cancer drivers. In parallel, progress in synthetic chemistry has facilitated the assembly of a broad armamentarium of molecularly-targeted therapies. However, whilst immunotherapy agents have produced notable benefits for subgroups of patients, the impact of molecularly-targeted therapies have been relatively modest.
Further unlocking the undeniable power of genomics in cancer will involve both the systematic removal of barriers and the avoidance of distractions that obscure progress. Both of which are discussed here.
Next Generation Sequencing Technology: An Open Letter From Mostafa Ronaghi
Posted 18th September 2017 by Jane Williams
Dear Colleagues,
Launched in 1990, the Human Genome Project involved thousands of scientists across the globe and took 13 years to complete. Using capillary electrophoresis-based Sanger sequencing, it cost nearly $3 billion. In 2014 Illumina announced the first technology that could sequence a whole genome for less than $1,000.
