Flow Cytometry utilizes fluorescently labeled antibodies to detect specific biomarkers on the surface and within cells, and over the past few years, there has been a surge in reagents available for flow cytometry applications. Most of these have been developed using monoclonal antibodies raised in mice and conjugated to a range of fluorophores. However, there are still instances where suitable monoclonal antibody reagents/conjugates are not commercially available, and small-scale conjugations are not practical. In these instances, so-called indirect staining may be employed, where the binding of an unconjugated primary antibody is detected using a secondary anti-IgG antibody conjugate.

Due to its ability to analyze multiple parameters across different cell types within a sample, flow cytometry can provide very rich and clinically valuable data sets from even small volumes of blood. However, flow cytometry is a challenging platform to master, and requires significant investment into equipment and technical training. So, for many researchers, outsourcing flow cytometry to a Contract Research Organization (CROs) is both cost-effective and the best way to ensure the highest quality of data from their samples. So, what types of flow cytometry applications are the most outsourced to CROs?

There has been an increasing focus on large molecule therapeutics and pharmaceutical companies have increasingly aligned their development pipelines in that direction. This has resulted in more biological therapeutics coming to market.  Last year,…

Pharmacokinetic modeling during the drug development process is essential for determining whether an administered drug substance has the necessary characteristics to meet its intended medical use. Typically for small molecules, this is based on…

Several important classes of drugs are inherently unstable in biological fluids. Examples include alkylating agents, cytostatic nucleosides, drugs with ester, aldehyde, thiol, nitroxyl or lactone functional groups, and small molecule compounds with unstable metabolites, such as acylglucuronides. The rate at which an analyte degrades in blood, other biological fluids, or…