Dr. Martin Poinsinet de Sivry Houle (Biomedical Engineering & Physics) has received the prestigious President’s Award for Excellence at CYTO, the world’s largest conference on cytometry, held in West Palm Beach, Florida on 10 June. The President’s Award is presented by the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) to one or more outstanding early-career members who have made exceptional contributions to the field.
Martin was honoured for his lecture on a new method that boosts the maximum detectable nanoparticle event rate in flow cytometry by more than an order of magnitude. Flow cytometers are widely used instruments to count and characterize cells and particles. With the new technology, these devices can now analyse nanoparticles more than ten times faster than previously possible. While conventional systems typically measure several tens of thousands of particles per second, the new approach reaches rates close to one million particles per second.
Detection of rare extracellular vesicles
This major step forward makes it possible to study much rarer nanoparticles, including extracellular vesicles: tiny particles released by cells into the bloodstream that carry important information about health and disease. Detection of extracellular vesicles is highly relevant in the context of cancer, where they are being explored as potential biomarkers. Thanks to this work, researchers can now detect extracellular vesicles that are up to ten times rarer in patients’ blood plasma, for example vesicles originating from tumour cells. Faster and more sensitive analysis of these vesicles may speed up the discovery of new biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring, and could ultimately contribute to more personalised care for patients.
Potential for broader use
The research was conducted within the NWO VIDI project “1E3”, led by Dr. Edwin van der Pol, in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team. The innovation has resulted in a patent application filed together with Amsterdam UMC’s Innovation Exchange Amsterdam (IXA), underlining its potential for broader scientific and clinical use.