Description of service

Computational tools will be employed for the analysis of multiparametric flow cytometry data. Classical two-dimensional scatter plots analysis cannot be sufficient for the multidimensional nature of the flow cytometric data, especially when many parameters are simultaneously combined for studying the phenotype, effector function and the polyfunctionality of activated immune cells. Computational tools will be employed to analyze, visualize and interpret large amounts of cell data in an automated and unbiased way. Multiparametric flow cytometry can be particularly suitable for deep analysis of both T and B responses after vaccination, allowing to measure the frequency, the phenotype and the functional features of antigen-specific cells. The automated analysis allows to identify, in an unbiased way, all the cellular phenotypes elicited by vaccination, including not only terminally differentiated cells but also transient stages of differentiation, thus providing important information on activation and developmental stage of immune cells. Computational analysis can provide a complete signature of the both the innate and adaptive immune responses elicited by a particular vaccine formulation, that can be hardly obtained with the classical bi-dimensional gating analysis.