Gain deeper insights into the mechanisms of immune cell killing of tumor cells: accelerate your time to answer with integrated software analysis

Immuno-Oncology Insights 2021; 2(6), 327–343

10.18609/ioi.2021.040

Published: 8 December 2021
Innovator Insight
Nicola Bevan, Tim Dale, Jeffrey Skolnik, Colby Souders

Understanding the processes of the immune system and interactions at a cellular level is essential to identify and validate new targets, and determine cellular therapy approaches. Advanced cell analysis tools can be used to unlock the secrets of immune cell interactions, and potentially enable future breakthroughs in immune-based therapies. Integrated software analysis is a key component of advanced cell analysis platforms, allowing for interactive assay development and the evaluation of large datasets through multiparameter data visualization. From linking well data together to combining multiple assay outcomes to identify ‘hits’, integrated software analysis can quickly provide the data insights needed to accelerate the drug discovery process. Flow cytometry has been used extensively to study immune cells, yielding information regarding cellular subtypes, activation status and viability using expression profiles and cell health markers. In recent years, live-cell analysis has become an established method by which temporal and spatial information can be gained from the interactions and resultant killing of tumor cells. Here, we present two solutions from Sartorius for gaining deeper insights into the mechanisms of immune cell killing, follow by an expert roundtable discussion on the current approaches available for assessing immune cell function.