ProFit Programm – PULZY

Other projects funded by the EU

Nearly 2 million people in Germany suffer from inflammatory rheumatic diseases, including 20,000 children. In order to understand the causes of these diseases, measurement methods are necessary that robustly detect and identify pathological changes in cells. Until now, such analyses are mostly carried out with flow cytometric methods, which, however, require a complex sample preparation and the staining of the cells with cell-specific molecules. The procedures and reagents required for this can have undesirable effects on the cells, such as activation, influencing immunophenotypic characteristics, cell permeabilisation, cell loss or apoptosis. Furthermore, currently available flow cytometers have limitations with regard to the number of measurable parameters, measurement accuracy, sensitivity, comparability and reproducibility as well as stability of the measurement

In the research project “Pulse shape-based flow cytometry and cell sorting”, both points are to be addressed by a novel analysis method of pulse shape-based flow cytometry. The aim of this project is to investigate whether cells can be identified using pulse shape analysis of scattered light signals, whether an improvement in the quality of the data can be achieved in combination with conventional flow cytometry and under what conditions marker-free cell analysis and cell sorting can be carried out. Within this project the DRFZ collaborates with the company APE – Angewandte Physik und Elektronik GmbH  –

People involved in the project:
Toralf Kaiser