Abstract 91: Comprehensive 27-marker standard panel for immune monitoring of pre-clinical tumor mouse models using spectral analyzer technology

Abstract Within the last decade, major technological advances in flow cytometry and (single cell) RNA-sequencing have deepened our understanding of complex anti-tumoral immune responses. This allows a comprehensive immune monitoring of novel therapies in pre-clinical models. Conventional flow cytometry is reaching its technical limitation. The emitted fluorescence signal of the target population stained with antibodies is evaluated with simple bandpass filters, which leads to spectral overlap and thus the number of parameters that can be analyzed simultaneously is limited. The spectral analyzer technology combines both methods, providing great flexibility in evaluating different immune cell populations. This provides the opportunity to obtain target information by measuring the entire fluorescence spectrum measuring each wavelength individually and thus evaluating the true signal of each fluorochrome unaffected by autofluorescence or spillover. Our standard all-in-one flow cytometry panel uses the full capacity of a conventional BD Fortessa flow cytometer and enables the differentiation of important immune cell populations in tumors, such as T cells (CD4+, CD8+, regulatory T cells), B and NK cells as well as macrophages (M1/M2), MDSCs (granulocytes and monocytes) and dendritic cells. However, it would be of great advantage to gain further insights into activation and effector functions of the immune cells using markers like CD44 Part 1 (Regular Abstracts) ; 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84 (6Suppl): Abstract nr 91.