Claudia Weihe, MS
Senior Technician and Lab Manager at the University of California Irvine School of Biological Sciences
Claudia Weihe obtained a master’s degree in bacterial genetics from the Ernst Moritz Arndt University, Germany. She moved to sunny California, and her research career has spanned several fields within the life sciences, beginning with prostate cancer genetics and evolving into microbial ecology.
She worked with Juergen Reichardt at the University of Southern California in the Institute for Genetic Medicine on prostate cancer genetics. She then moved to the University of California, Irvine, where she worked with Harry Haigler in the Department of Biophysics and Physiology.
Since 2007, she has been working with Jennifer Martiny in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCI. Their research explores the mechanisms that generate and maintain microbial diversity across environments -from soils and oceans to the human body- and how this diversity shapes ecosystem functioning and responses to environmental change. As part of this work, they have also applied Flow Cytometry to quantify bacterial abundance in environmental samples.
Talk: Quantifying Soil Bacteria Abundance by Flow Cytometry
Abstract: Bacterial abundance is a fundamental metric for understanding the population dynamics of soil bacteria and their role in biogeochemical cycles. Despite its importance, methodological constraints hamper our ability to assess bacterial abundance in terrestrial environments. Here, we aimed to optimize the use of flow cytometry (FCM) to assay bacterial abundances in soil while providing a rigorous quantification of its limitations. Soil samples were spiked with Escherichia coli to evaluate the levels of recovery efficiency among three extraction approaches. The optimized method added a surfactant (a tetrasodium pyrophosphate [TSP] buffer) to 0.1 g of soil, applied an intermediate degree of agitation through shaking, and used a Nycodenz density gradient to separate the cells from background debris. This procedure resulted in a high (average, 89%) level of cell recovery. Recovery efficiencies did not differ significantly among sites across an elevation gradient but were positively correlated with percent carbon in the soil samples. Estimated abundances were also highly repeatable between technical replicates. The method was applied to samples from two field studies and, in both cases, was sensitive enough to detect treatment and site differences in bacterial abundances. We conclude that FCM offers a fast and sensitive method to assay soil bacterial abundance from relatively small amounts of soil. Further work is needed to assay differential biases of the method across a wider range of soil types.
Dr. Dino Di Carlo
Professor and Department Chair of Bioengineering at the University of California Los Angeles Samueli School of Engineering
Dino Di Carlo is the Armond and Elena Hairapetian Professor of Bioengineering at UCLA, serial entrepreneur and inventor. He serves in academic leadership roles as the Chair of the Bioengineering Department and Deputy Director of a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. He is an author on >200 peer-reviewed articles and an inventor on >80 issued patents in the U.S. and across the world. His research focuses on the interface between micro & nanotechnology, information technology, and the life sciences. He also has served in business leadership roles. He co-founded several companies in the diagnostics, medical device, and biotech/pharmaceutical industries and continues to serve on the board of directors of many of these companies, and as a scientific advisor and mentor to startups, including Cytovale, Tempo Therapeutics, and Partillion Bioscience. His inventions are incorporated into commercial medical devices, such as Cytovale’s IntelliSepTM test, which is the first test approved by the FDA to detect sepsis early in the emergency department, and Tempo Therapeutics’ MAP Wound MatrixTM, which has shown efficacy in humans to regenerate tissue in large wounds. Other inventions from his lab scale and automate life science research, such as Nanovial technology from Partillion Bioscience, which allows antibody drug developers to rapidly discover new antibody sequences, accelerating life-saving drugs to the clinic. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed upon young scientists and engineers in the U.S.
Talk: Dyad Cytometry: High-Throughput Profiling and Sorting of Cell–Cell Interactions with Nanovials
Abstract: Flow cytometry is exceptionally powerful for measuring single-cell state, but many high-value phenotypes in immunology and therapeutics arise from cell–cell influence: what one cell does to another through contact or secreted factors. In this talk I will introduce dyad cytometry, a framework in which the fundamental cytometry “event” is a templated multicell assay rather than an individual cell, enabled by Nanovials: bowl-shaped, selectively functionalized hydrogel microparticles that can be analyzed and sorted on standard cytometry instruments. I will first describe capped Nanovial workflows that co-localize an antibody-secreting cell with a target reporter cell, converting secreted antibody function into a direct, quantitative fluorescence readout of target-pathway modulation, enabling high-throughput discovery and enrichment based on functional impact, not secretion alone. I will then extend the same concept to endogenous communication by templating T cell–tumor cell dyads at scale, sorting dyads by interaction outcomes, and coupling sorted dyads into droplet-based scRNA-seq to read out emergent transcriptional programs with Cell-Cell-seq. Together, these demonstrations unify a single idea: particles create a controlled microenvironment where one cell’s effect on another becomes a sortable cytometry phenotype, enabling scalable functional screens and mechanistic readouts of cell–cell communication.
Kelly Lundsten
Life Science and Technology Consultant, SOULCAP Board of Directors Member
Kelly Lundsten is a Product Development, Bioanalytical Methods and Business Development professional with 20 years Biotechnology experience specializing in emerging technology in fluorescence-based bioassays. She is an industry-wide recognized subject matter expert in the applications of fluorescence chemistry particularly flow cytometry and microscopy multiplexed cell analysis. She has spent her career being the bridge between advanced instrumentation platforms, novel reagents, and bioassay methods first with Molecular Probes/Invitrogen and later with Biolegend. She has also worked for FluoroFinder in the pursuit of tools to aid panel development in flow cytometry. She now does consulting with her own company, Luminous Bioanalytical Consulting, where she helps companies with application, product and market development. Kelly is also an academic editor for OMIP submission to Cytometry Part A and a board member of the SOULCAP consortium. She currently lives in Fort Collins, CO.
Talk: Harmonizing Flow Cytometry: The SOULCAP Foundation
Abstract: The rapid expansion in the number of parameters being integrated into flow cytometry assays has further made apparent the glaring inconsistencies in how we identify, name and gate on cell subsets, inconsistencies that are at the heart of the reproducibility crisis. Further, image-enabled instruments make it clear how common it is for immunologically synapsed cells to fall inside “singlet” scatter gates, contaminating the downstream purity of gated populations and conclusions about their function. Yet, when a cell event is identified as a member of a cell subset, we do not have an appropriate nomenclature that adequately describes the variance in marker combination or likelihood of contaminating events falling into the subset gate. The SOULCAP Foundation assembled in an attempt to unify different efforts to harmonize cell subset identification from basic research through clinial trials. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are pressuring the community for curated, qualified databases that use consistent naming conventions so that each research result is referring to the same cell identity and any conclusion drafted from these databases will have internal integrity. I will present on the mission of SOULCAP, its organization and the initial work and conclusions of the Annotation Team responsible for the empirical validation of different essential marker combinations in the pursuit of a harmonized identity of cell subset members. The Annotation Team has begun to give guidance on “gold standard” marker combinations, including required vs recommended exclusion markers and guidance around consistent gating practices and hopes to build empirically driven guidance around a data quality standard. There are also many variables that are commonly understood to impact assay validation, data quality, antigen abundance and accessibility in an assay and these concerns will also be addressed.
Dr. Dequina Nicholas
Assistant Professor Step IV, University of California Irvine, Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine (Joint Courtesy Appt)
Dr. Dequina Nicholas is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Irvine in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. The Nicholas lab studies the intersection of the nutrient environment, the immune system, and metabolic disease using a combination of molecular and cellular biology, transgenic mouse models, cytokine profiling, and flow cytometry. Dr. Nicholas’s work focuses on how the immune system and cellular metabolism impacts endocrine diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes and polycystic ovary syndrome. Dr. Nicholas received her Ph.D in biochemistry from Loma Linda University and pursued postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Barbara Nikolajczyk at Boston University, studying the metabolism of immune cells from patients with type 2 diabetes. Dr. Nicholas also trained in the laboratories of Drs. Mark Lawson and Pamela Mellon. During that time, Dr. Nicholas established the importance of glucose metabolism in reproduction and discovered a population of immune cells in the pituitary that regulate the reproductive axis. Dr. Nicholas has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award from NIAID to fund her “immunoendocrine” lab where her mission is to train the next generation of diverse scientists. She is passionate about changing the culture of science to valuing diversity and inclusivity.
Talk: Integrative Flow Cytometry Approaches Distinguish Metabolic Pathways in Pathogenic and Non-Pathogenic Th17 Cells
Abstract: Th17 cells play critical roles in both immune defense and autoimmune pathology, yet the metabolic signatures that distinguish pathogenic from non-pathogenic subsets remain poorly defined. To address this challenge, we developed an integrative flow cytometry platform that pushes the boundaries of single-cell metabolic analysis. Our approach combines Partillion nanovials with a novel Th17 enrichment protocol to enable high-resolution characterization of rare cell populations. Using spectral flow cytometry, we identified Th17 cells through their active secretion of cytokines via single-cell ELISAs. Magnetic enrichment allowed us to isolate viable Th17 cells while preserving their functional integrity for downstream analysis. We integrated transcriptomic profiling to molecularly define pathogenic versus non-pathogenic Th17 populations and leveraged sequencing data to develop a data-driven gating strategy that identifies pathogenic and non-pathogenic Th17 cells. This integrated workflow revealed that acyl carnitines are key metabolic drivers of non-pathogenic Th17 cells, distinguishing them from their pathogenic counterparts. Our findings establish a new paradigm for dissecting cellular heterogeneity through multi-modal flow cytometry and provide actionable metabolic targets for therapeutic intervention in Th17 driven diseases.
Dr. Anshu Agrawal
Professor in Residence, University of California Irvine, School of Medicine
Dr. Agrawal is a Professor in the Division of Basic and Clinical Immunology, Department of Medicine, and a member of the Institute of Immunology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in India, where she studied liposome-based drug delivery for macrophage-targeted infections, sparking her interest in immunology. She further trained in France in tumor immunology and completed her postdoctoral work at the Emory Vaccine Center under Dr. Pulendran, developing expertise in dendritic cells and innate immunity.
At UC Irvine, Dr. Agrawal leads an independent research program focused on innate immunity in aging and its role in disease. Her work examines the decline in respiratory immune responses with age and how interactions between immune and epithelial cells drive lung inflammation, infection susceptibility, and tissue injury. Her research also extends to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Her laboratory has contributed to understanding how airway epithelial cells regulate immune function and modulate lung immunity.
Dr. Agrawal serves as Chief Editor for Mediators in Inflammation and Specialty Chief Editor for the immunology section of Frontiers in Aging.
Talk: IL-21 Driven Dysregulation of Lung Immunity and Fibrosis in Aging
Abstract: Aging is a major driver of chronic lung disease, with the population over 60 projected to nearly double by 2050, creating a growing burden of age-associated pulmonary disorders. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a particularly severe example, characterized by progressive fibrosis, limited treatment options, and a median survival of 3–5 years. Aging promotes a pro-fibrotic lung environment marked by chronic inflammation, impaired repair, and dysregulated immune responses; however, the mechanisms linking immune aging to fibrosis remain poorly understood. Our work identifies IL-21, a pro-inflammatory cytokine elevated in both aging and IPF, as a key mediator of lung pathology. IL-21R knockout mice demonstrate resistance to fibrosis and we find that IL-21 promotes cellular senescence and metabolic dysregulation in the lung. Leveraging multiparameter flow cytometry, we characterize immune and structural cell populations, quantifying senescence and lipid accumulation at single-cell resolution. These approaches enable the identification of distinct cell subsets exhibiting pro-fibrotic phenotypes in response to IL-21 signaling. Together, our findings highlight IL-21 as a critical link between immune aging and pulmonary fibrosis and demonstrate the power of flow cytometry–based approaches to dissect cellular heterogeneity and functional states in fibrotic lung disease.
Christian Aguilera-Sandoval
Executive Scientific & Medical Affairs Leader
Dr. Christian Aguilera-Sandoval is the Founder of SuperNova Flow Cytometry and an expert in flow cytometry, cell and gene therapy, and analytical development. He has held scientific roles at leading companies including FlowJo and Becton Dickinson and now focuses on advancing cytometry education. Dr. Aguilera-Sandoval earned his Ph.D. in Immunology from UCLA and completed postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research has been published in journals including Nature and Nature Biotechnology, and he regularly speaks at international cytometry and cell therapy conferences, teaching practical approaches to panel design, instrument optimization, and multiparameter data analysis.
Talk: Mastering Panel Design, Reagent Selection and Benchmarking
Abstract: Flow cytometry is a critical technology in cell and gene therapy (CGT), supporting assays used to measure identity, purity, viability, and potency during product development, manufacturing, and clinical trials. This session introduces practical strategies for designing robust multiparameter flow cytometry assays for CGT applications.
Dr. Kevin Kelly’s talk was cancelled as he was unable to attend the meeting.
Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at USC Keck School of Medicine