Automated comparison of flow data from HIV and vaccine infected subjects.

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our laboratory conceived and developed the initial flow cytometry instruments and has since introduced many innovations that increase the broad utility and accessibility of this technology. As part of this effort, we developed key software an analysis capabilities that are now ubiquitous among research and clinical users of flow technology, among whom HIV researchers and clinicians clearly predominate. In studies here, we propose to exploit our long-term flow expertise in the interests of introducing much needed flow capabilities to facilitate high normal and high-throughput work HIV trial samples and samples analyzed during vaccine development Basically, we propose to develop innovative methods to automate data handling and processing tasks for flow data. This will include the application of our recently published methods for locating and identifying cells in subsets of interest, so that we can do statistically robust comparisons of subset marker expression in/on these subsets. These methods will also allow us to develop innovative methods for identifying individual or groups of marker changes stimulated by antigen or other stimulation of frozen or freshly collected samples from trial and/or other subjects. Importantly, this software is intended to provide (for the first time) a robust single measure of non-coordinated changes in expression of several intracellular cytokines induced in T cell subsets stimulated in vivo or ex vivo in vaccine development models. Because of its design, we propose to create the software we build for these tasks in an integrated format that is readily amenable to automation to enable high-throughput analyses.