On March 23, 2016, Shanghai Institute of Immunology, BD China and the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) signed a strategic cooperation memorandum, which is China's first cooperative project dedicating to the comprehensive promotion of flow cytometry. This collaboration brings together industry, academia and multi-edge research, covering multi-level training program, international instructor certification training and counseling certified by research institutions, providing special education fund and establishing education base to functions in all direction, which is committed to promote China’s flow technological development with international standards. Su Bing, Director of Shanghai Institute of Immunology, and AwtarKrishan, President of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry, Deng Jianmin, Vice President of global BD/General Manager of Greater China, attended the ceremony and delivered a speech. Lv Wen, Business Director of Bioscience, BD Greater China, Fang Liang, Vice Director of Bioscience Service and Application, BD Greater China, the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry experts and PIs of Shanghai Institute of Immunology witnessed this important moment.
Flow cytometry is a technique that can do functionally quantitative analysis and sorting means of detection at the level of single cells or other biological particles, which can quickly analyze tens of thousands cells and can get a plurality of measured parameters from a single cell. Compared with traditional testing, flow cytometry owns high speed, high precision, high accuracy, etc., thus becoming the most advanced cellular quantitative analysis technique commonly used in both clinical and basic research fields such as immunology, cancer, cell biology, genetic development, microbiology, clinical testing, marine environment, and so on. Within the framework of this strategic cooperation, there are three major categories of cooperation.
First, multi-level training will be carried out. According to the content, the project will hold the internationally high-end FACS applications exchanges every year in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, inviting domestically and internationally leading experts to inform the development trend of FACS, the application keypoints and the classic cases, comprehensively covering theoretical lectures and hands-on training. At the same time, Reference laboratories and education base will be established in Shanghai Institute of Immunology, regular seminars should be organized so that international technology development and the latest developments in local practice will be timely delivered. And the hands-on courses will be throughout the year.
Second, the project will focus on the cultivation of internationally certified instructors and the counseling training certified by research institutions. Technical staff interested in International Cytometry Certification Examination (ICCE) will get professional counseling and the representative in China FACS will be the lecturer in ISAC. BD will fully support Chinese experts to attend the international conference of CYTO in the future, to participate in various international training courses of FACS and show their outcomes in international journals like Cytometry. Meanwhile, China has not yet research institutions certified by ISAC, the implementation of this project will help promote the development of domestic FACS technology in depth and breadth, which is expected to fill this gap.
Third, the project will set up a special education fund. The FACS Fund donated by BD China, will be governed by ISAC Scene Education Group to support China’s FACS researchers to get persistent technological education.
After the signing ceremony, Su Bing said that, in recent years, under the guidance of "Better Talents, Better Institute" policy, Shanghai Institute of Immunology, with the support of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, with encourages system and mechanism innovation, imports top international leading talents, suitable talents for discipline development and excellent talents ever studying abroad from key fields, and sets up an energetic research group with international view and competitiveness composed of “National Overseas High-level Talents”, “National Overseas High-level Young Talents” , “Shanghai Overseas High-level Talents”and so on. The research focuses on four domains including immune regulation and signal transduction mechanisms in autoimmune diseases, mechanisms of immune regulation and new intervention strategies in intestinal diseases, the host-pathogen interaction in infectious diseases and the means of prevention and treatment and screening of novel tumor markers and tumor immune therapies.
At the same time, SII emphasizes the cooperation and communications with high-level universities from home and abroad, organizes actively interdisciplinary, inter-regional and international exchanges in immunology research and works on the construction of SII into the key base of top international cooperation and the cradle for the cultivation of international creative talents. Since 2012, Shanghai Institute of Immunology has perfected large scientific facilities and equipment, integrated and optimized technology and resources and has improved its service. After more than four years’ construction, it has already officially established 6 large public technology core systems including Flow Cytometry Core, Imaging Core, Immunohistochemistry Core, Biomarker Research and Development Core, Sequencing Core, Mouse Common Strain Collection Core. The above platforms are shared by SII and relative disciplines from School of Medicine, offering them well technical support and scientific service of high quality.
Especially the Flow Cytometry Core, currently has from entry level to advanced flow analysis system, including FACS Calibur, FACS CantoII, LSR FortessaX20 and BD FACSymphonyA5. It is worth mentioning that, our FACSymphony A5 entering just now the market in February 2016, is the second one at Asia-Pacific region and also is the China's first instrument. The system is a new cell analysis system based on innovative technological invention who allows measurement and analysis of high-throughput high content at the level of individual cell and can simultaneously detect up to 50 different parameters at the single cell level. With ultra-high-speed analysis capacities, the system can provide up to 40 000 points / second detection rate, its ultra-quiet electronic system can improve the detection sensitivity so as to identify and analyze the type of rare cells; it can realize the thorough identification and analysis of cell phenotype and use the limited amount of samples to maximize the obtained information.
It is believed that the introduction of this system will further boost SII’s development in scientific research, achieve more innovative scientific breakthroughs, deepen our understanding of the immune system and understanding of related major diseases, and produce more and better new clinical diagnosis and treatment decisions. We firmly believe that this cooperation among SII, BD China and ISAC will promote the development of FACS in China, further make for the development of basic medicine focusing on immunobiology and of translational medicine. We also look forward, through this benchmarking cooperation, to bringing useful exploration and to accumulate valuable experience for the development of translational medicine and the precise medical standards. It also will further strengthen SII’s role in leading the discipline development in domestic and abroad.
About BD
BD is a global medical technology company, aiming to lead the world health by improving medical discovery methods, medical diagnostic effectiveness and quality of care. BD belongs to leading ranks worldwide in maintaining patients and staff safety and in strengthening medical research and clinical laboratories building. The company provides innovative solutions to help advance cytology and genomics research, to strengthen the diagnosis of cancer and infectious diseases, to improve drug management, to promote infection prevention, to provide tools for surgery and interventional therapy, to optimize respiratory therapy and to support diabetes management. BD hands with institutions and organizations worldwide to jointly cope with the most challenging global health problems. The company has offices in more than 50 countries and employs more than 45,000 people. The company works closely with customers and partners to help improve health outcomes, to reduce health care costs, to improve efficiency and to maintain the safety of patients and staff and increase health care accessibility.
About the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC)
ISAC stands for International Society for Advancement of Cytometry, composed of professional engineering and technical personnel dedicated to automatic cell analysis, whose members come from all over the world. It is a specialized international organization continuing to promote the application and the technology development of FACS. ISAC promotes FACS for scientific research and clinical analysis, helps to integrate various cell analysis methods on a global scale, and promotes FACS in the international community.
