International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) flow cytometry shared resource laboratory (SRL) best practices

Abstract

The purpose of this document is to define minimal standards for a flow cytometry shared resource laboratory (SRL) and provide guidance for best practices in several important areas. This effort is driven by the desire of International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) members in SRLs to define and maintain standards of excellence in flow cytometry, and act as a repository for key elements of this information (e.g. example SOPs/training material, etc.). These best practices are not intended to define specifically how to implement these recommendations, but rather to establish minimal goals for an SRL to address in order to achieve excellence. It is hoped that once these best practices are established and implemented they will serve as a template from which similar practices can be defined for other types of SRLs. Identification of the need for best practices first occurred through discussions at the CYTO 2013 SRL Forum, with the most important areas for which best practices should be defined identified through several surveys and SRL track workshops as part of CYTO 2014. © 2016 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.

Cyt‐Geist: Current and Future Challenges in Cytometry: Reports of the CYTO 2018 Conference Workshops

“…There was general agreement around the importance of educating the user base as well as on the use of beads and daily QC's and defined cocktails. The latter were in-line with recommendation found in recent publications (52,71,72) and a recent NIST-FDA flow cytometry workshop on building measurement assurance (73). Discussion was held around the frequency of use of reference material (each day, each run, etc.)…”

“…The overview of cytometer performance maintenance presented processes to ensure stable instrument performance (28,52,71,72). There was general agreement around the importance of educating the user base as well as on the use of beads and daily QC's and defined cocktails.…”

MiSet RFC Standards: Defining a Universal Minimum Set of Standards Required for Reproducibility and Rigor in Research Flow Cytometry Experiments

“…Similar to the MiSet RFC Standards initiative, EuroFLOW was created to address the main sources of variability affecting the validity and reproducibility of clinical flow cytometry experiments (60). Minimum standards have also been defined in the setting of flow cytometry SRLs, providing guidance for best practices in instrumentation, training, experimental design, biosafety standards, and sample handling (11,20,21). EuroFLOW standards are commonly considered a robust approach (61,62).…”

“…ISAC endorses several resources that help to define, annotate, and report flow cytometry experiments (e.g., optimized multicolor immunofluorescence panels (OMIPs) (18) and MIFlowCyt (19)), as well as recommendations issued for specific settings of immunology research and SRLs (11,(20)(21)(22). ISAC endorses several resources that help to define, annotate, and report flow cytometry experiments (e.g., optimized multicolor immunofluorescence panels (OMIPs) (18) and MIFlowCyt (19)), as well as recommendations issued for specific settings of immunology research and SRLs (11,(20)(21)(22).…”

Shared Resource Laboratory (SRL) Communications—A New Journal Type

“…In 2016, Cytometry published the ISAC Flow Cytometry Share Resource Laboratory (SRL) Best Practices which updated and expanded on previously identified standards for an SRL . This article was the first of its kind to identify minimal standards in order for a Flow Cytometry SRL to achieve excellence, and can be used as a template from which other SRLs in other scientific disciplines can build upon.…”