RECENT ADVANCES IN FLOW CYTOMETRY: PLATFORMS, TOOLS, AND CHALLENGES FOR DATA ANALYSIS - Flow Cytometry in Drug Discovery and Development - page 20

RECENT ADVANCES IN FLOW
CYTOMETRY: PLATFORMS, TOOLS,
AND CHALLENGES FOR DATA
ANALYSIS

P AUL J. S MITH ,R OY E DWARD , AND R ACHEL J. E RRINGTON

2.1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

An expanding range of both new and refined technologies is being applied at all stages
of modern drug discovery by the pharmaceutical industries. There is also a growing
involvement of the academic sector in the early phases of target identification,
elucidation of mechanisms of action, invention of discovery technologies, and
creation of molecular probes and reporter systems. In parallel, there is a drive to
advance the means of extraction of knowledge from acquired data through bioinfor-
matics. Flow cytometry lends itself to exploitation within this discovery and devel-
opment pathway due to its unparalled capacity to analyze heterogeneous cellular
systems, provide multiparameter functional information at the single-cell level, offer
flexibility for different reporter systems, and acquire data in standard structures. The
working context for flow cytometry in discovery and development essentially reflects
the emphasis and expectation placed upon cell-based analyses at different stages
within the pathway. Fundamentally, the cell-based assay provides an opportunity to
examine the target within a minimally relevant environment and to perceive complex
outcomes such as molecular translocation events as part of a downstream pharma-
codynamic response that may have a stochastic element to the timing of expression
or be driven by other permissive events such as cell cycle progression.