Cytometry in stem cell research and therapy

Abstract

recent Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to two stemcell researchers, John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, for theirachievements in stem cell research and reprogramming ofsomatic cells. Flow cytometry is by nature the ideal tool toidentify, characterize, and isolate stem and progenitor cells forresearch and potential clinical use (1). The major strength offlow cytometry is its ability to rapidly perform highlymultiplexed quantitative measurements on single cells withina heterogeneous cell population. However, when the cell typeof interest is extremely rare, as most stem and progenitor cellsare, several sources of artifact must be addressed. The impor-tance of flow cytometry as a driving force for stem cellresearch was demonstrated in a focused issue of the journalexactly three years ago (1). This current focus issue of Cytome-try A is devoted to the topic of stem cells due to numerouscurrent innovations and discoveries.Applications of stem cells include several disciplines,from embryogenesis, adult tissue maintenance, and repair,and more recently, cancer as well as for toxicity screening anddisease modeling. All of these topics are represented in thisissue, with special emphasis on the role of analytic and pre-parative flow cytometry in the elucidation of stem cell pheno-type and function, and best laboratory practices as they applyto flow cytometry. Image and flow cytometry together withcell sorting have revolutionized the study of stem cell biologyand the implications of these cells and their progeny indevelopmental biology, tissue engineering, and cellulartherapy. The number of parameters and the speed of theirsimultaneous measurements in single cells has continued toincrease with advances in hardware, reagents, and analyticalsoftware (2).