5-laser spectral flow cytometer

• Subject Area: Medicine
• Term: Funded in 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556674473

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) cause 1.8 million premature deaths annually in Europe, accounting for 45% of all-cause mortality and imposing an economic burden exceeding €210 billion per year. Amongst diverse CVD pathologies, heart failure (HF) is a major debilitating endpoint associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. Therefore, there is an urgent need for novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies based on new pathophysiologic concepts. Myocardial biology and disease have been revisited from an immunological perspective, and recent conceptual and methodological breakthroughs have enabled an unprecedented characterization of immunological mechanisms underlying myocardial diseases. Immunological mechanisms can impact myocardial cell biology in complex, time- and context-dependent ways, and understanding myocardial immune responses requires a comprehensive phenotyping of cardiac immune cells. Amongst various high-dimensional immunophenotyping modalities, recent advancements in spectral flow cytometry approaches have enabled the simultaneous detection of numerous intracellular and surface proteins per cell base; thereby allowing the identification of complex immune cell subsets and phenotypic states with great granularity. The raising field of cardio-immunology has gained momentum worldwide, and the recent establishment in Würzburg of the Collaborative Research Centre 1525 “Cardio-immune interfaces” (CRC1525) and the recruitment of a Heisenberg Professor for Cardio-immunology have strategically positioned the University Hospital of Würzburg at the forefront of this competitive field. Based these recent developments, and supported by strong intramural commitment, we envisage establishing a high-dimensional cardiac-immunophenotyping unit equipped with a dedicated state-of-the-art multiparameter spectral flow cytometer including 5 lasers and more than 50 detection channels.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: 5-Laser spektrales Durchflusszytometer
• Instrumentation Group: 3500 Zellzähl- und Klassiergeräte (außer Blutanalyse), Koloniezähler
• Applicant Institution: Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
• Leader: Professor Gustavo C. Ramos, Ph.D.