Join us:
Thursday, October 1, 2020
16:30 – 18:30
Core facilities aim to facilitate the use of high-end technologies by providing expert knowledge and maintaining the instrumentation, which is shared among researchers for their various research topics. The cytometric landscape has changed significantly over the last few years and many new technologies have been added completing the existing possibilities.
This year’s scope of the Core Facility Session deals with spectral cytometry, a very current topic which is revolutionizing the field of flow cytometry. There will be two talks from Simone Pöschel (University Hospital Tübingen, Germany) and Bastian Höchst (TU Munich, Germany). These talks will focus on the perspective of setting up a new spectral cytometer with all its advantages, challenges and pitfalls as well as on how the application of spectral cytometry can lead to cutting-edge fundamental research.
Chairs: Christian Kukat & Frank Schildberg
Implementing spectral cytometry in a core facility: one lab’s experience with the Cytek Aurora
Simone Pöschel
Universitätsklinikum Tübingen, Germany;
Contact: Simone.Poeschel@med.uni-tuebingen.de
You want to take flow cytometry to the next level of performance?
The Cytec AURORA allows separation of fluorochromes with very close emission profiles by capturing the entire emission spectrum signature of the fluorescent dyes rather than just a section of it. This enables the use of a wide range of new fluorochrome combinations and opens the door to high complexity applications.
Having recently implemented the AURORA in our Core Facility, we would like to introduce you to this interesting technique and share our experiences of the establishing procedure. We will talk about advantages, challenges, pitfalls of technique and software and present first data and results.
Did we arouse your interest? We do look forward to exchanging our experiences with this powerful technique.
The metabolic momentum of MDSCs
Bastian Höchst
Technische Universität München, Germany;
Contact: Bastian.Hoechst@tum.de
Myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) develop in the response to chronic inflammation and are key players in blunting immune responses against cancer. Despite the high importance of these cells in local regulation of effector T cells in cancer and intensive research efforts in this filed, no molecular marker has been identified that defines MDSCs.
We could show that MDSCs are characterized by a strongly reduced metabolism and that they transfer this hibernation-like state to CD8 T cells and thereby paralyze them.
This effect is caused by the accumulation of the dicarbonyl radical methylglyoxal, which is produced by the semicarbazide sensitive amine oxidase (SSAO). Methylglyoxal is transferred to the effector cells where it leads to a depletion of l-arginine.
In a preclinical model, we demonstrated that neutralization of methylglyoxal overcomes MDSC-mediated suppression and, in combination with checkpoint inhibition, leads to significantly improved cancer immunotherapy.
Our results identify methylglyoxal as a functional marker metabolite for MDSCs that mediates T-cell paralysis and may serve as a target for improving cancer immunotherapy.