"iPSCs quality standards: Canadian and international perspectives "
Monday November 4, 11:50 AM-1:50 PMMontréal 2 & 3 RoomSpeakers:Dr. Thomas DurcanAssociate Director, Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU), Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro)Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill UniversityDr. Stephen SullivanProgram Manager & International Liaison Officer, Global Alliance for iPSC Therapies (GAiT)Dr. Adam HirstSenior Scientist, Pluripotent Stem Cell Biology, STEMCELL Technologies Inc.The critical quality attributes required for translational iPSC-based research projects to meet clinical grade specifications for cGMP manufacture and release for delivery into patients will be featured in this interactive workshop. Emphasis will be placed on validation and standard operating procedure development needed to standardize quality control (QC) of iPSC production to improve laboratory efficiency, experimental reproducibility and to optimize scalability of manufacturing. Speakers will describe their ideal QC workflow based on real case studies. International consensus-built QC guidelines will be compared with those developed here in Canada. Canadian and international perspectives from the Global Alliance for iPSC Therapies, STEMCELL technologies and Montreal Neurological Institute will be presented and discussed.
"Dimensionality Reduction and Clustering Tools for High Parameter Discovery"
Tuesday November 5, 11:40 AM-1:40 PMMontréal 2 & 3 RoomSpeaker: Tim Crawford, Ph.D., Scientist, BD Life SciencesWith high parameter cytometry and single cell multi-omic experiments becoming common practice in the stem cell field, thorough identification of cells using a traditional manual gating approach has become increasingly cumbersome and challenging. Fortunately, a number of algorithmic dimensionality reduction (DR) and clustering tools have been developed that can aid in the visualization of high parameter data, and be employed to discover complex populations, some of which may be overlooked or difficult to find using traditional manual gating. In this workshop we will discuss alternative DR (tSNE, fitSNE, UMAP) and clustering (Phenograph, FlowSOM, X-Shift) algorithms that are available for FlowJo v10, and will demonstrate a high parameter analysis workflow that can be used to algorithmically identify populations and compare their distribution across experimental conditions. Furthermore, we will introduce the BD Rhapsody™ and the BD FlowJo SeqGeq™ system that is empowering scientists to generate and analyze their own single cell multi-omic (protein + RNA transcript) data. Come let BD help you achieve your goals in the rapidly advancing fields of stem cell biology and cell therapy.
"Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Program and Research Support for Blood, Stem cells and Tissue"
Wednesday November 6, 12:20 PM-1:20 PMMontréal 2 & 3 RoomSpeakers:• Dr. Heidi Elmoazzen, Director of Stem Cells, Canadian Blood Services• Dr. Nicolas Pineault, Senior Scientist, Canadian Blood ServicesCanadian Blood Services operates the Stem Cell Registry and a public cord blood bank in support of patient care and new knowledge creation. In addition, Canadian Blood Services supports a large network of Canadian researchers through logistical support (i.e., storage, transport), provision of products (i.e., hematopoietic stem cells, white blood cells), funding programs and in-house HSC research program.Join Drs. Elmoazzen and Pineault to hear about how your research may benefit from Canadian Blood Services national (outside Quebec) operations.