DGfZ

POSTER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 3, 2010

Don’t forget to submit your Abstract for consideration as a Poster Presentation

Click HERE to Submit your Abstract!

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Members of the DGfZ can apply for a subdomain of the DGfZ web presence.

What does that mean ?

Sometimes the web pages of your laboratory, institute, core facility or your personal home pages are hard to find, because they have some cryptic web address. For example http://www.ukb.uni-bonn.de/IMMEI/flowcore/index.html. As a member of the society you can now apply for a subdomain of the DGfZ that includes your name. The above web address then translate into www.elmar-endl.dgfz.org.

If somebody now enters www.elmar-endl.dgfz.org into the address bar of the browser he will be redirected to the original web page.You now have a web address that is easier to remember both by yourself and other you send your contact data.

If this would be useful for you just send the application to Dr. Elmar Endl, including the address you want your visitors to be redirected to. We then will set up a subdomain www.firstname-surname.dgfz.org for you. We hope this might simplify the search for members of the DGfZ and their corresponding web presentations. Other subdomains might also be suggested and it is up to the council if they find it appropriate that this subdomain will be hosted under the domain of the DGfZ.

Best Regards and any suggestions welcome

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Open Special lecture:

Decision-making under time pressure

Birte U. Forstmann

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Das Buch “Zelluläre Diagnostik“, herausgegeben von Ulrich Sack, Gregor Rothe und Attila Tarnok, erschien 2006 im Karger-Verlag und liegt nun 2008 in einer komplett überarbeiteten englischen Ausgabe “Cellular Diagnostics. Basic Principles, Methods and
Clinical Applications of Flow Cytometry” herausgegeben von Ulrich Sack, Attila Tarnok und Gregor Rothe vor.

Zytometrische Verfahren haben in den letzten Jahren einen festen Platz in der Laboratoriumsdiagnostik gefunden. Mit der Entwicklung immer neuer, besserer und einfacherer Protokolle sind dadurch zahlreiche Eigenschaften von Zellen einer diagnostischen Beschreibung zugänglich geworden. Während die Durchflusszytometrie als reproduzierbare und weit verbreitete Methode bereits Eingang in Routinelaboratorien gefunden hat, beginnt sich daneben die Laserscanningzytometrie als alternative Technologie erst zu etablieren. Durch neue Applikationen und innovative methodische Ansätze, die die Vorteile zytometrischer Messprinzipien für zahlreiche weitere Parameter erschließen, wird der Einsatz derartiger Verfahren auch in Zukunft weiter zunehmen. Multiparameteranalysen und Miniaturisierung sind weitere Schritte zur Verbesserung der zellulären und immunologischen Analytik.

Mit den vorliegenden Büchern sollte eine Lücke geschlossen werden, indem eine aktuelle Zusammenfassung des gegenwärtig verfügbaren Spektrums zytometrischer Verfahren in erprobten Protokollen mit Hinweisen für die praktische Durchführung dargestellt wird. Weiterhin werden neue technische Ansätze
beschrieben, die Perspektiven für die weitere Entwicklung der Durchflusszytometrie aufzeigen. Die Wertigkeit der Verfahren wird in indikationsbezogenen Abschnitten verdeutlicht.

Die Autoren sind mit zytometrischen Verfahren seit Jahren vertraut und haben selbst an der Entwicklung und Verbesserung der zytometrischem Diagnostik mitgearbeitet. Als Mitglieder der für die vorgestellten diagnostischen Probleme maßgeblichen Fachgesellschaften haben sie die Entstehung dieses
Buches ermöglicht.

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Dr. Michael Ormerod, a well known teacher of flow cytometry, has just published a new book: Flow Cytometry – A Basic Introduction. According to his comments, the intended audience of the book is people coming to flow cytometry for the first time. It is of a reasonable length (116 pages), so that it can be read and understood easily. While the book is not an exhaustive exposition of every aspect of the technique, it covers flow cytometry’s major applications in mammalian biology.

You can get a first impression from an also published online version.

Moreover, and most important in my opinion, he has also created a wiki version of the book. The wiki version contains all the contents of the book, but allows anyone to add or edit articles. They hope that you will be able to contribute in areas of your expertise to make the wiki a valuable flow cytometry resource for entire community.

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Dear Visitors

the presentation of the DGfZ is undergoing a complete refurbishment.

What does that mean ?

We will install and test various interactive web page components to increase communication among our members and guests about all interesting scientific, social and technical aspects of cytometry. This might be better known as WEB 2.0 technologies and the implementation is not as easy as it may sound. Therefore this pages will undergo irregular rearrangements and redesign. A little bit of a mess makes playgrounds lots more fun.

So stay tuned

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HIV/Aids, is there still hope in Africa ?

The opening session of the DGfZ was dedicated to talks and discussions about the three most disastrous diseases in the world: tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/Aids. Two deeply involved scientists agreed to give an overview about the actual problems which are predominant in the developing world, where access to scientific advances and therapies is difficult. Our guests were Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Göhde, Germany and Prof. Dr. Yves Traoré from the Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Their talks presented a topic already discussed at the ISAC conference in Quebec following the ” one of the most emotive and personally challenging lectures” held by Stephen Lewis. A general question of how improving a technique might improve the ability of fighting infectious diseases in Africa (cytometry for life), lowering the price of the reagents (mAB CD4) being one of the first steps. As always it takes hands and hearts to do it and people that do not “think big” but “think simple”, which is in no way related to “being easy”. Prof. Göhde and Prof. Traore simply went out and started to solve the problems were they are, in Africa.

Recent publications from the World Health Organization presented the following statistics for the three endemic and frightening diseases: There are 60 million infected people with HIV/AIDS, 2 billion infected tuberculosis individuals and more than 300 million person infected with the malaria parasites. Although AIDS is a relatively young disease which was discovered first time in 1981 the two other diseases are long since known and were already described and treated by Robert Koch and Luis Pasteur around 100 years ago. However, as it turns out over the years the virus and the microorganisms had special defence mechanisms and virulence strategies which are not known from other human pathogens. This made research and treatment of infected people difficult and the question remains:

Prof. Göhde presented ‘Adapted technologies and new concepts for diagnosis of three major diseases in Africa: Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS’. Since 2000 he is engaged in the development of robust and affordable Flow Cytometry techniques for developing countries and resource-poor settings which resulted in the demonstration of the first mobile HIV/Aids laboratory at the world AIDS Conference in Barcelona 2002. Additionally, he is involved in the development of affordable diagnostic solutions for TB and Malaria testing.

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The Prize is dedicated to award a young scientist for a scientific work out of the wide field of Cytometry which appears outstanding both in scientific quality and innovation as well as presentation and layout. As every year since 1996 the DGfZ awards a young scientist with the Klaus-Goerttler-Prize, which goes along with prize money of 1000 €. The award is named after Prof. Klaus Goerttler, a retired Pathologist and trend-setting member of the foundation board of our society.

In 2008 it was an extraordinary pleasure for us to award Elza Friedländer, born ’80 in Hungary, for her Ph.D. thesis she has finished in the beginning of this year.

Elza Friedländer got her education at the University of Debrecen in Hungary and passed her M.D. exam in 2005 with summa cum laude. She got delved into biophysical science at the Dpt. of Biophysics and Cell Biology, Research Center for Molecular Medicine, Medical and Health Science Center. Elza Friedländer’s Ph.D. thesis is entitled “Molecular interactions of ErbB receptor tyrosine kinases – with an outlook on their therapeutic targeting” By her scientific study she addressed the function of ErbB receptors in terms of mobility, interaction, crossactivation and other features more and used highly sophisticated, cytometric techniques as for example Fluorescence-Correlation-Spectroscopy (FCS), Fluorescence-Resonance-Energy-Transfer (FRET) and Fluorescence-Recovery-After-Photobleaching (FRAP).

With her Ph.D. thesis Elza Friedländer presents a valuable scientific contribution by extending the knowledge of ErbB-receptor biology both in general and in tumor biology. The scientific board of the society achieved an unambiguous agreement that the application by Elza Friedländer, supported by her supervisor Gyorgy Vereb, is based on a formidable scientific profile, which is impressively documented and published. The application addresses best the spirit of the public offer of the societies’ award. We congratulate Elza Friedländer and inscribe her into the list of KG-Prize winners as the 14th laureate.