Dr. Vivek Tanavde

Affiliation : Associate Professor, Division of Biological & Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University, India

Title of the Talk/Lab :Characterization of Mesenchymal Stem Cells by Flow Cytometry

Vivek Tanavde obtained his Ph.D from the Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai (1999) in Applied Biology.From 1999 to 2002, he was a post doctoral fellow at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Centre, Johns Hopkins University working on expansion of hematopoietic stem cells. He returned to India in 2002 and was head of the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Lab at Reliance Life Sciences, Mumbai. His laboratory also provided diagnostic services using flow cytometry, mainly in CD4/CD8 &single platform CD34 enumeration. From 2006-2016 he wasa Principal Investigatorat Bioinformatics Institute, A*STAR, Singapore.Currently he is an Associate Professor at the Division of Biological & Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University. Most of his work has focused on developing protocols for expansion and targeted differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells. His current research focuses on the use of bioinformatics and systems biology to understand mesenchymal stem cell biology and differentiation.

Lecture/Lab: Characterization of Mesenchymal Stem Cells by Flow Cytometry

This lecture/lab will cover flow cytometry applications for identifying stem cells. The lecture will focus on the various flow cytometric techniques for identifying stem cells with a particular focus on hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells. Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSC) have the potential to differentiate into a wide variety of tissues including bone, cartilage and fat. There are a variety of markers available for enumerating MSC in culture. The International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) developed a consensus definition for identifying cultured MSC (1,2). This definition has proven useful to define MSC used in cellular therapy protocols. Since the ISCT criteria for defining MSC measure the expression of multiple cell surface markers on single cells, multi parameter flow cytometry is a useful tool to identify MSC. This wet lab will focus on identifying cultured MSC fulfilling the ISCT criteria using multi parameter flow cytometry on a 2 laser/4 color instrument.

Relevant Literature:

1. Dominici M, Le Blanc K, Mueller I, Slaper-Cortenbach I, Marini F, Krause D, Deans R, Keating A, Prockop D, Horwitz E. Minimal criteria for defining multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells. The International Society for Cellular Therapy position statement. Cytotherapy 2006;8(4):315-7.

2. KodeJ, Tanavde V. Mesenchymal Stromal Cells and Their clinical applications. In: Applications of Flow Cytometry in ‘Stem Cell Research and Tissue Regeneration’, Eds. Awtar Krishan, H Krishnamurthy and Satish Totey, Wiley- Blackwell Publications. 2010.