Panel discussion: Flow cytometry in bioanalysis

What will you learn?

• The assays, techniques and platforms currently used in flow cytometry research
• Major challenges of bioanalytical flow cytometry, including outsourcing research and implementation in global clinical trials
• AI/algorithm-driven tools for streamlined data analysis
• Key trends and technologies that will shape the future of flow cytometry

Who may this interest?

• Biotech and pharma professionals
• Flow cytometry specialists
• Regulatory and quality assurance professionals
• Lab managers and outsourcing coordinators
• Data scientists and bioinformaticians
• Clinical researchers
• Clinical operations

Speakers

Thanh-Long Nguyen
Manager of Bioanalytical Sciences
ICON

Thanh-Long Nguyen is a Manager of Bioanalytical Science at ICON. He holds a Doctorate degree in the field of Immunology from Saint Louis University School of Medicine (MO, USA). Long’s field of expertise includes flow cytometry and biomarkers and his role currently includes leading the flow cytometry method development team in Lenexa, Kansas, as well as providing scientific support to the business development and operational teams.

Virginia Litwin
President-Elect
International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry

Virginia Litwin is a thought-leader in validation and standardization focusing on “Cytometry from Bench-to-Bedside”. She is currently the President-Elect of the International Society of the Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC; DC, USA). In 2023, she received the International Clinical Cytometry Society (ICCS) Wallace H Coulter Award in recognition of her contributions to Clinical Cytometry. She is a member of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Flow Cytometry Standards Consortium and has been an invited speaker at FDA/NIST several times.

Virginia serves on the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) Expert Panel and is the Documents Development Committee chair for the CLSI guidance documents on Validation (H62 1st Edition) and Immunophenotyping (H42 3rd Edition). She is an Editor for Cytometry Part B and has been a guest editor for special issues addressing translational cytometry. She founded the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Flow Cytometry Committee. After obtaining a PhD in Virology/Immunology from the University of Iowa (IA, USA), Virginia joined Lewis Lanier at DNAX (CA, USA) as a post-doctoral fellow where she identified the KIR receptor, CD158E1. She was a biomarker scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb (NJ, USA) and is currently a Director of Scientific Affairs at Eurofins Clinical Trial Solutions (KS, USA).

Ryan Brinkman
Vice President and Research Director
Dotmatics

Dr Brinkman’s research focuses on developing and applying flow cytometry bioinformatics approaches to advance understanding of human health and disease through the analysis of big data. He led foundational work creating free, open-source computational infrastructure for high-throughput analysis, including core programming functionality in R, MIFlowCyt, FlowRepository, and recent versions of the FCS standard. He founded and led Cytapex Bioinformatics Inc. (Burnaby, Canada) through its acquisition, applying these tools to both basic research and clinical investigations. Currently Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) and VP & Research Director of Cytometry at Dotmatics (MA, USA), his recent work includes the Project Discovery partnership with EVE Online, where 839,000+ citizen scientists contributed to the development of ML-based automated gating algorithms. With the current paradigm shift toward AI, Dr Brinkman founded the SOULCAP Foundation (Whistler, Canada)—a 501(c)(3) non-profit effort to standardize immune cell identification and labeling in cytometry, enabling AI-driven analysis across the field. He has been deeply involved in ISAC as Scholar, Council member, Data Standards Task Force Chair, workshop co-organizer, and Associate Editor for Cytometry Part A, and received ISAC’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018.

Gelo dela Cruz
Flow Cytometry Platform Manager
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine – reNEW

Gelo dela Cruz is the manager of the Full Spectrum and Imaging Flow Cytometry Platform at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine – reNEW at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Educated and trained in molecular biology in the Philippines and the United States, he started his flow cytometry career as an operator at the New York University Cancer Institute Flow Cytometry Core Facility (USA) in 2006. In 2010, he moved to Heidelberg to work at the flow cytometry core facility of the German Cancer Research Center. He was recruited to establish and start up the core facility at the Danish Stem Cell Center in Copenhagen in 2012. He is a 2015 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) Shared Resource Laboratory Emerging Leader and founder of CPH FLOW, the Copenhagen-area flow cytometry user group.