Enhancing reproducibility in single cell research with biocytometry: An inter-laboratory study

PLoS One. 2024 Dec 9;19(12):e0314992. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314992. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Biomedicine today is experiencing a shift towards decentralized data collection, which promises enhanced reproducibility and collaboration across diverse laboratory environments. This inter-laboratory study evaluates the performance of biocytometry, a method utilizing engineered bioparticles for enumerating cells based on their surface antigen patterns. In centralized and aggregated inter-lab studies, biocytometry demonstrated significant statistical power in discriminating numbers of target cells at varying concentrations as low as 1 cell per 100,000 background cells. User skill levels varied from expert to beginner capturing a range of proficiencies. Measurement was performed in a decentralized environment without any instrument cross-calibration or advanced user training outside of a basic instruction manual. The results affirm biocytometry to be a viable solution for immunophenotyping applications demanding sensitivity as well as scalability and reproducibility and paves the way for decentralized analysis of rare cells in heterogeneous samples.

MeSH terms

  • Flow Cytometry / methods
  • Humans
  • Immunophenotyping / methods
  • Laboratories / standards
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Single-Cell Analysis* / methods

Grants and funding

Undergraduate faculty and student participation was supported by the Cell Biology Education Consortium: Path to Publication, an NSF-funded RCN-UBE (Award ID #2316122).