BD and Penn Institute Collaborate to Advance Immunotherapy through Flow Cytometry
Posted on 22 Dec 2025
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) has entered into a strategic collaboration with the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health (I3H, Philadelphia, PA, USA) at the University of Pennsylvania to advance research in deep human immune profiling and support the development of immune-mediated therapies. The collaboration aims to unlock the power of the human immune system to advance science and health.
The project supports the commitment of both organizations to contribute to the research community through collaboration and knowledge sharing. The collaboration includes developing and validating a high-parameter flow cytometry panel that can capture key functional pathways in whole blood, including phosphorylation markers, which provide powerful insight into how single cells respond to drugs or disease states.
The panel will support a planned 1,000-patient immune profiling study, in partnership with the Penn Colton Center for Autoimmunity, expected to start this summer. The team intends to publish a peer-reviewed manuscript describing the results of the study.
The project will leverage the BD FACSDiscover A8 Cell Analyzer, BD Rhapsody System, BD reagents, software, and informatics, with BD teams managing reagents, instrumentation, and spectral data algorithms, and I3H teams serving as scientific and clinical leads. The BD FACSDiscover A8 Cell Analyzer is the first cell analyzer to feature breakthrough spectral and real-time cell imaging technologies, and the new BD Horizon Chroma solution for dried high-parameter panels.
"High-parameter single-cell studies of this kind, once considered infeasible, are increasingly becoming central to better understanding the human immune system," said Steve Conly, worldwide president of BD Biosciences. "Our ecosystem of industry-leading BD flow cytometers, single-cell systems, reagents, software and informatics, provide a critical missing puzzle piece that can support the important work of organizations like I3H to translate and deliver immunological insights into quantitative, actionable information for discovery and clinical care teams around the world."
"This project demonstrates the power of collaboration between academia and industry," added Dr. E. John Wherry, PhD, the Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President's Distinguished Professor, director of the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health at the University of Pennsylvania, and the director of the Colton Consortium for Autoimmunity. "We are bringing together cross-functional experts to transform human immune profiling for maximum impact, enabling deeper insights from our immune cells that could accelerate development of precise medical treatments."
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