ISAC E-News ISAC E-Newsletter ISAC E-news -- December 2007 
| Flow cytometry NEWS |
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| ISAC E-news -- December 2007 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Dec 16, 2007 at 02:43 PM | |
ISAC E-News December, 2007ISAC News Highlights
Table of Content
Sneak Preview of Invited Speakers at your XXIV International Congress: Cytometry in the Age of Systems BiologyHere is a sneak preview of just a few of the outstanding speakers who will be presenting at the ISAC Congress May 17-21, 2008 :
Keep watching the ISAC web site for additional new and exciting information: http://www.isac-net.org/congress2008/ A New Year for Cytometry Part Aby Attila Tarnok, Editor, Cytometry A, tarnok@medizin.uni-leipzig.de This will be the first year that Cytometry Part A appears completely with the new look and the new article categories. A number of changes and improvements have been made. We changed and refreshed the lay-out of the journal and added several new features such as the Journal Roundup and in the January, 2008 issue we will modify article categories. Most important, the quality and the number of manuscripts are increasing and with the excellent support of the editorial office, manuscript processing has significantly improved. I am happy to announce that we have achieved a clear reduction in the turn-around time for manuscripts. In the mean, it now takes less than 30 days from submission of a new manuscript until the final decision is made. This goal could only be achieved by the tremendously high quality work of our new Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members and reviewers. I wish to express my gratitude to them. Most of all I wish to acknowledge our authors: your exciting work helps bring our Journal forward. Since our Journal has improved its Impact Factor in the last year, we also encountered a clear increase in the number of manuscript submissions. This enables us to select the best of the available material. As a consequence, our rejection rate increased to over 30%. Things to come : My intention for the future is to increase the range of available supplementary material. As an example, we will consider including more original measurements (data). This would have a number of advantages. First of all, the readers would be enabled to perform in silico part of the experiments and understand better the author’s conclusions. Secondly, these data can become excellent teaching material for those who want to establish the technologies used by the authors. And third, the data depository formed by these primary data sets will become a valuable source for meta-studies. To learn more about new manuscript and publication formats such as: Communications to the Editor, Brief Reports, Rapid Publications, and supplementary material submissions, see the January 2008 issue of Cytometry. Membership Services Committeeby Laura Teodori, teodori@casaccia.enea.it and Zofia Maciorowsky, Zofia.maciorowski@curie.net The Membership Services Committee has been busy getting ready for the Congress in Budapest and organizing a Scientific Professional Skills workshop geared towards students. Faculty for the workshop includes many successful ISAC members and researchers. Topics to be presented and discussed include preparing successful grant applications (US and Europe ), short term mobility funding for students, how to succeed in writing good scientific papers, and how to prepare and deliver scientific oral and poster presentations with a round table discussion afterwards. We have also been updating the ISAC Scholars Program, information and benefits, as well as the mentorship program. This information will appear soon on the ISAC Scholar’s web page. Dr Atwar Krishan and Dr Gulderen Demirel were instrumental in the organization of the First Turkish-US Flow Cytometry Workshop, with a roster of illustrious ISAC speakers and have induced 30 new students from Turkey to join ISAC. A proposal for enhancing the opportunities for attendance of ISAC members and others from Eastern European Countries has been made and approved by Council. More details will be available from the Membership Services Committee in the near future. Education Subcommittee Requestby Lori Krueger, Lori_Krueger@bd.com The ISAC Education Subcommittee for Flow Cytometry would like to invite ISAC members and commercial vendors to submit education materials (Powerpoint slides) as support materials for the basic flow cytometry curriculum that has been created and piloted over the past few months. These materials must be educational only and not commercial. ISAC must be allowed to use the materials freely for it's educational programs. Topics in the basic flow cytometry curriculum include: fluidics, optics, electronics, experimental set-up (appropriate controls, cell preparation, data structure, gating, analysis and display), and biosafety. Cell sorting will not be covered in this introductory session. Please respond with intent, or submit materials to the ISAC office no later than Jan. 21, 2008 Data Standards Task Forceby James C. S. Wood, Chair, ISAC Standards Committee. jcswood@mac.com The Data Standards Task Force (DSTF) has been actively working to develop a data standard format that will be the successor to FCS 3.0. Thanks to the effort of Ryan Brinkman and his collaborators, and funding from NIH, there has been considerable progress. The Task Force has agreed on the minimum information that is required to describe a flow cytometry experiment. This is summarized in the MIFlowCyt document that can be accessed from the ISAC web page or the FICCS web page ( www.ficcs.org). It is being proposed to Council that the MIFlowcyt document be approved for adoption by ISAC. Based on this document and a corresponding requirements document, the new data standard format is being developed. Aside from discussing how the data file should be organized, we are working on proposals for subsections to specify how to store the raw data (NETCDF is currently being considered), and to describe gating (GatingML), data transformation (TransformationML), and compensation (CompensationML). It is anticipated that in the near future, we will see implementations of some or all of these subsections become available for use. One particular goal is to apply this to the development of a cytometry data repository. Though the DSTF has been developing data standards based on our experience with flow cytometry, we have tried not to exclude the use of these data standards for image or high content screening cytometry. All the documents we have considered try to refer to cytometry without reference to a particular class of instrumentation. This topic generated some lively discussion the last Cytometry Development Workshop held November 6 – 9, 2007 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove , CA . The conclusion of this and other informal discussions was the acknowledgement that the image cytometry community needs to become more active in the development of data standards. It is anticipated that as this unfolds we will be hearing more from members who are involved in image cytometry and who will champion this effort. In addition to data standards, the Standards Committee is involved in instrument/reagent standards and data presentation standards. We are currently working on formalizing task forces to focus on these two areas of standards. A direct result of this effort will be presented at workshops at ISAC XXIV in Budapest . ISAC Core Managers Task Forceby Derek Davies, derek.davies@cancer.org.uk One major development from the Task Force is a re-vamp of the Core Managers area of the ISAC website. This is an ongoing project but can already be accessed by ISAC members from the front page. All comments are welcome and should be addressed to Chairman, Derek Davies derek.davies@cancer.org.uk). We are also keen to support initiatives that will allow interaction between managers so if you are organizing something, let us know as financial support may be available. Lastly, at the upcoming ISAC Congress in Budapest we will be organizing another Core Managers Workshop, so if there is anything specific you would like to discuss or hear about, please get in touch! ISAC Foundation?ISAC President Paul Robinson has asked Council to consider establishing a “Foundation Fund”. This proposal was discussed at the last Council meeting. No action was taken at that time. More information will be gathered in order to address any and all options. The fund, if established, would allow for individuals to donate resources for the betterment of the organization or for special projects that may not be ordinarily fundable within the operating budget of the Society. For example, the opportunity to create a fund with essentially unrestricted expenditure opportunities is attractive for creation of new programs, funding named awards, and establishing memorials to individuals who have had impact on the Society. More information will be forthcoming as options are considered and debated. The Future of Cytometry in India and China?Following President Paul Robinson’s lead, Council discussed “What is ISAC’s role?” The combined population of these two dynamic countries is 2.5 billion. ISAC membership for 2006 was 56 in China and 35 in India . Several courses driven by Awtar Krishan have resulted in the formation of Cytometry India an ISAC affiliated organization. While there are many scientists traveling to China , there are few organized courses. The question was raised as to what ISAC should be doing:
Council members are interested in hearing from the membership with ideas, suggestions, and any other input you wish to provide. Hall of Fame Recognition for Flow Cytometry and New AIMBE FellowsThe American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has selected five technologies for its 2007 Hall of Fame: Contact Lens, Cochlear Implant, Pulse Oximetry, The Inner Ear Canal Digital Hearing Aid, and Flow Cytometer & Cell Sorter! Thanks to John Nolan for working so hard on this. In addition, AIMBE has selected Ger van den Engh, Alan Waggoner, Lou Kamentsky, Len Herzenberg, Lans Taylor, and Mike Loken as 2008 AIMBE Fellows. Congratulations! Affiliated Society NewsFlow Cytometry in Turkeyby Gülderen Yanıkkaya Demirel MD, PhD, gydemirel@yahoo.com (Dr. Demirel is a Board Member of the Turkish Society of Immunology, Head of the Flow Cytometry Subcommittee, and a member of the Organizing Committee for 1st Turkish-US Flow Cytometry Workshop, 2007.) Turkey , land of many civilizations and natural heritage, has a rather young flow cytometry community. The first flow cytometry in Turkey was an EPICS V (Coulter Electronics, Ltd) which was installed to Dr. Emin Kansu Laboratory in Hacettepe University , Ankara in 1988. The following year, two EPICS Profiles were installed in Istanbul (DETAM, Istanbul University and Dr. Pakize I. Tarzi Laboratories). The number of flow cytometers increased to almost 80 systems in 2007 from 18 systems in 1993. There are two flow cytometry companies in Turkey ; Beckman Coulter and Becton Dickinson, both with branch offices. Type of flow cytometers and tests in TurkeyMost of the systems used are bench top flow cytometers, the majority being either FACSCaliburs or FC500s while the number of sorting systems is limited to 6 – 7 systems throughout Turkey . Most of the Turkish flow cytometry laboratories are analyzing clinical and research samples in the same laboratory. Leukemia/lymphoma immunophenotyping, stem cell analysis, DNA analysis, platelet surface immunophenotyping are the main applications in clinical settings. There are only two private flow cytometry laboratories with internationally recognized accreditation (ISO 15189). Flow Cytometry Course at DETAE, IstanbulThe flow cytometry course run at DETAE, Istanbul University on yearly basis has completed the 13th course this year. A five days course with basic and advanced flow cytometry topics covers diverse areas of flow cytometry. As a by-product of this course, two books in Turkish (Flow Cytometry and Medical Applications) were published in 1999 and 2004. Proficiency Testing/Inter Laboratory Comparison (PT/ILC) ProgramA Proficiency Testing/Inter Laboratory Comparison (PT/ILC) program for flow cytometry tests has been started by Centro Laboratuvarları, Istanbul in 2006 under the guidance from a EU-MEDA Project. As of October 2007, two distributions have been completed for Lymphocyte Subset Immunophenotyping Panel. Twenty-two laboratories performing clinical analysis have participated in this program. The questionnaire which was distributed before the accomplishment of this program would give a general idea about the Turkish flow cytometry users. 100% of the users who replied to questionnaire wanted to enroll the program. 42.2% wanted to have two distributions per year while 26.3% asked for three distribution, 15.8% four times a year, 10.5% once a year and 5.2% for every month. The participants wanted to have other panels also: 63% Leukemia/Lymphoma Panel, 31.5% CD34 Immunophenotyping and 5.2% asked for other panels. Only 36.8% had previously participated to a recognized PT program, most to commercial flow cytometry company users programs. Only 5.2% participated in the UK NEQAS program. The PT/ILC program is run free of charge to participants. Results from PT/ILC ProgramOf 22 laboratories only 4.5% had out of range results. Results were compared to the values of reference laboratories (mean of two accredited German laboratories and the Turkish PT provider laboratory) as well as the mean of participating laboratories. 91% of the participating laboratories were happy with the results while 9% were not, due to fact that they received their samples after three days, therefore their results were not in compliance with others. During the first round a commercial fixative was used for samples, because the stability of samples was not good, fresh samples were sent in a second distribution. Advice on preparation, analysis and interpretation was provided to requesting laboratories. Continuation and improvement of this program will be obtained with support and participation of all of the flow cytometry laboratories. What will be future of flow cytometry in Turkey ?
Meeting ReportsResource Managers WorkshopAn ISAC-sponsored Resource Managers Workshop was held immediately prior to the annual Great Lakes International Imaging and Flow Cytometry Association (GLIIFCA) meeting on September 28, 2007 . This 4th annual day-long meeting was held in Windsor , Ontario and attended by more than 30 individuals interested in core facility management. The title of this year’s workshop was “Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Shared Resource Labs: One Size Does Not Fit All”. Presentations from a variety of facilities were featured including a discussion of the pros and cons of each structure. The goal for attendees was to identify a structure that may be similar to their current lab or to identify a structure that their lab aspires to become. Presenters included Natasha Barteneva (Harvard), Kathy Schell (U Wisconsin-Madison), Joanne Lannigan (U Virginia), Paul Champoux (U Minnesota), Mike Sramkowski (Case Western Reserve U) and Hank Pletcher (U Penn). In addition Drew Bantly reviewed the progress of the QC consensus document efforts that began at last year’s workshop and Julie Auger presented results of a recent survey of US academic core managers on facility financial structures. Enthusiasm of the attendees was high and many problems and solutions were discussed. Applications for funding regional core managers workshops are considered by the ISAC Core Managers Task Force chaired by Derek Davies. Contact Laureen Rowland, ISAC Executive Director for application procedures at lrowland@isac-net.org. 1st Turkish-US Flow Cytometry WorkshopThe 1st Turkish-US Flow Cytometry Workshop held in Istanbul, October 25-28 was a huge success. Sponsored by the Turkish Society of Immunology and the Pathology Department, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the workshop focused on cell cycle and proliferation, apoptosis, immunophenotyping, hematopoietic stem cell analysis, drug transport and resistance. The venue provided by the Department of Immunology, DETAE, Istanbul University , was excellent with well appointed spacious labs, class rooms and auditorium. Beckman Coulter provided crucial support with four flow cytometers, technical staff and reagents for the labs. Travel support for faculty was provided by Beckman Coulter, UICC, ISAC and the Clinical Cytometry Society. Fifty-six research students from different parts of Turkey and one each from Iraq and Bulgaria attended the lectures and participated in the wet labs where four simultaneous lab sessions covered eleven one hour long topics. Five tutorial sessions interfaced students with a faculty member to discuss specific topics. The faculty from abroad included Martin Adelmann, Scott Cram, Michael Keeney, Michael Ormerod, Vincent Shankey, and William Telford. Excellent labs sessions were conducted by technical experts including Mr. Ron Hamelik, Raquel Cabana, Metin Kurtoglu, Janice Popma, Suzan Adin Cinar, Gulhis Akar, Sema Bilgic Gazioglu, Esin Aktas and Gaye Erten. Several prominent flow cytometry experts from Turkey including Drs. Berna Aslan, Klara Dalva, Gunnur Deniz, Emil Eksioglu-Demiralp, Dicle Guc, Zafer Gulbas, Aydan Ikinciogullari, Gulderen Yanikkaya-Demirel, Mustafa Yeneral and Gaye Erten gave lectures and participated in wet labs. The initial feed back from the participants was that the material presented and facilities for the workshop ranked as “outstanding to excellent”. Thirty five new members joined ISAC thru the efforts of Dr. Gulderen Yanikkaya-Demirel and several faculty members. Exceptional effort and splendid organizational skills of the organizers including Dr’s. Awtar Krishan, Gaye Erten, Gunnur Deniz, Gulderen Yanikkaya-Demirel, Ayfer Cetinkaya, Berna Unses and Martin Adelmann, made this a highly successful and interactive workshop. Upcoming Meetings/Conferences/User Groups/CoursesNIH Flow Cytometry Interest Group meetingDecember 14, 2007 . The next NIH Flow Cytometry Interest Group meeting will be held on Friday, December 14, 2007 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM at the NIH Bethesda campus, Lipsett Auditorium. An excellent group of speakers is scheduled, with seminars themed around Preclinical and Clinical Applications for Flow Cytometry. Everyone is invited to attend. Coffee and lunch will be generously provided by Guava Technologies and Dako. If you wish to attend, Please RSVP at billflow@hotmail.com. There is no cost for the meeting - we just need to determine how many lunches we will need to provide. Biomedical and Engineering and Imaging Research Opportunities Workshop (BIROW)January 17-19, 2008 , Bethesda North Convention Center , Rockville , MD. ISAC is one of the sponsors of the Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Research Opportunities Workshop (BIROW 5) to promote the integration of research topics of interest to ISAC members with the global health care goals of NIH. This year in collaboration with more than 26 collaborating bioengineering and imaging societies (see http://www.birow.org for details) researchers will evaluate and prioritize the importance of imaging and characterizing structure and function in native and engineered tissue. Quantitative Imaging Cytometry Symposium, Cold Spring Harbor , New York January 30 to February 1, 2008 . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is pleased to announce the Inaugural Quantitative Imaging Cytometry Symposium which will be held at the Laboratory’s main campus. The meeting is structured to combine both the theory and practice of QIC, with morning seminars featuring a keynote lecturer and presentations by researchers employing the technology in their work. A full 3-day course fee of $1500 will cover admission to the morning symposia, all afternoon practical sessions and materials, a peer-reviewed poster session and reception, accommodations for three nights and meals for three days on the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory campus. Partial registration packages are also available. flowcytometryUK Eventsby Derek Davies, derek.davies@cancer.org.uk Peter O'Toole at the Technology Facility at the University of York hosts his popular hands-on Flow Cytometry course at the end of January. Places are limited and the courses are invariably full so register an interest as soon as possible. More details at: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/biol/tf/ic_flowcourse.htm The Royal Microscopical Society¹s annual Flow Course will also be held at the University of York between the 15th and 19th September 2008. Details of the program and registration are at: http://www.rms.org.uk/event_flow.shtml Looking even further ahead, following a successful first meeting, flowcytometryUK, will be holding its second meeting in July 2009; the exact dates and venue haven’t yet been finalized but keep an eye on the website for details! 2008 NW Regional Cytometry Meeting, Portland , Oregon March 13-15, 2008 . The 2008 NW Regional Cytometry Meeting will be held at OHSU on March 13 - 15. The meeting is 'ecumenical' (characterization thanks to HMS) in the sense of organized for both a flow and imaging group, and topics to be discussed have been chosen with this in mind. Topics on Friday, March 14, will generally be more flow related, while those on the 15th will be more imaging and ~omics related, with emphasis on high content analysis. The meeting as a whole has been informed by an opportunity in Oregon for a legislatively funded drug discovery pre-screening facility. Oregon Translational Research and Drug Discovery Institute (OTRADI) will set up operations later in the year, and this meeting is designed in part to engender more interest in high content analysis. General discussion of probes, integration of different ~omic platforms, and automated acquisition, will open what opportunities these technologies present for a more dynamic, systems understanding of the cell. This research may have significant benefits for individualized medicine and drug discovery. The meeting will be of wide interest given the thrust of automation and importance of systems cell biology. 31st Annual Course in Flow Cytometry, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, MaineJune 14-20, 2008 . The annual research course will provide you with state-of-the-art information on important cutting-edge topics in cytometry. Nationally recognized instructors organize hands-on laboratories and present related lectures. If you're interested in learning about cytometry or just seeing what's new, come on and experience an intense week of hard work and good times in the great state of Maine . To obtain the latest information on the course and/or register, visit our web site, http://www.vsh.com/bowdoin. Contact: Mark Munson, Verity Software House, Inc., E-mail: sales@vsh.com. Joint Meeting with The Microscopy Society of America, Albuquerque, New MexicoAugust 2-3, 2008. The first joint session with the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) at “Microscopy and Microanalysis-2008” will occur this coming summer at the regular MSA meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ISAC members have participated in this meeting in the past, but this coming year there will be a Pre-Meeting Congress devoted to “Cellular Analysis: Linking Quantitation to Structure And Function” under joint sponsorship of the two societies. The Pre-Meeting Congress is scheduled for August 2-3, and the regular MSA meeting continues August 3-7. Please find current information at the MSA website, http://www.microscopy.org. You can also register through the MSA site. The Pre-Meeting session is organized by J. Paul Robinson, Robert M. Zucker and Randall W. Smith, and will include a superb group of speakers on several aspects of cellular analysis including confocal, multiphoton, HTS, single molecule, fluorescence and other supporting and correlative methods. Besides the Pre-Meeting Congress, there will be an open session in the regular MSA meeting: "Imaging, Fluorescence and Flow Cytometry," Session A04 organized by J. Paul Robinson and Randall W. Smith. This open session will accept a broad range of both poster and platform presentations. Laboratories, students and postdocs are encouraged to present their research there. The MSA meetings have many interesting and concurrent sessions that you will find useful. There will be several sessions and posters on optics, fluorescence, filters, equipment and instruments that support ISAC objectives and functions. Another session of interest to ISAC members is "Imaging Cells and Tissues in 3D- Confocal Microscopy" co-organized by Bartek Rajwa and J. Paul Robinson. Among outstanding speakings who will be presenting are Badri Roysam, Peter So, and Erik Manders. |
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