Standardizing immunophenotyping for the Human Immunology Project

Abstract

Standardized immunophenotyping assays are a requisite for accomplishing the proposed Human Immunology Project, which involves the comprehensive elucidation of the metrics of healthy versus diseased or perturbed human immune systems. The variables inherent in flow cytometry immunophenotyping are largely known, and include reagent choice, sample handling, instrument setup and data analysis; strategies to mitigate each of these variables are available. Several groups, including the Human Immunophenotyping Consortium, are standardizing reagent panels for flow cytometry. Together with the adoption of such standard panels, an infrastructure for aggregating and mining results will be needed. Availability of such panels and the data-mining infrastructure should result in more rapid biomarker discovery for immunologically relevant diseases.