Assessing Stem Cell Population Changes in Tissue for Translational Research
The course takes place prior to the Stem Cells World Congress.
Engraftment of stem cells or recruitment of endogenous stem cells are promising therapeutic strategies for regenerative medicine. Assessment of stem cell number and fate in tissue is becoming an increasingly important readout for translations studies utilizing stem cells. Advancing potential therapies to clinical trial requires a substantial accumulation of reliable preclinical data to validate therapeutic potential. Accurate and reliable quantitative microscopic data is a critical component of basic, translational, and clinical research. Research to develop new stem cell-based therapeutics is especially reliant upon quantitative histological data from small and large animal models and treated human subjects to validate safety and efficacy. However, the effort and time required to obtain such data often inhibits application of rigorous methods. In addition, this effort and time required may produce studies with insufficient statistical power. Furthermore, superficial quantification of histological data can lead to erroneous conclusions accepting false-positive or false-negative outcomes. This may result in incorrect decisions to pursue or abandon lines of investigation or require time-consuming and costly repetition of experiments.
This course will cover the fundamental errors and biases that can occur with traditional cell counting approaches and discuss the limitations inherent with these approaches. These errors and biases can be overcome by the use of design-based stereological sampling. This quantitative histological approach has the added benefit of being insensitive to volumetric changes between conditions, allowing for a substantially more robust quantitative estimate of stem cell survival, differentiation, and integration to be obtained. Manual and computer-assisted approaches to stereological sampling will be discussed along with special considerations for using confocal microscopy to image multiple immunofluorescently stained material. The current status of automated high-throughput data acquisition and considerations for data storage and resource management will be presented. Finally, considerations for implementing automated post-acquisition cell counting procedures will be discussed.
Who Should Attend:
• Research scientists planning or conducting in vivo studies
• Facility managers
• Data managers
• Executives responsible for preclinical studies
• Executives responsible for clinical trials
• Regulatory officials
Registration is at https://selectbiosciences.com/conferences/Peterson_SCWC2010/booking/regi...
