Workshop 1: Practical AML MRD Pediatric and Adult Approaches
Organisers: Margarita Maurer-Granofszky (Vienna, AT) and Francesco Buccisano (Rome, IT)
Level: Intermediate level flow cytometrists. Maximum number of places:30

Flow-cytometry is a diagnostic technique that allows a multiparametric, fluorence-based assessment of surface, cytoplasmic and nuclear antigen expression on a suspension of blood, bone marrow or solid-tissue cells. Besides having a key role in acute leukemia lineage assessment, multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) has a fundamental role in response assessment by the evaluation of Measurable residual disease (MRD). MRD has emerged as a powerful prognostic biomarker in acute leukemia, deeply influencing risk stratification, post-remission management, and transplant decision-making both in adult and pediatric setting. Advances in MFC have increasingly enabled sensitive detection of leukemic persistence, uncovering disease dynamics that are imperceptible with conventional morphology. Despite these technological developments, important challenges remain regarding standardization, interpretation, timing of assessments, and integration of MRD into therapeutic algorithms across diverse patient populations. In this workshop we will illustrate the current state of the art, guidelines and standization efforts carried on by expert laboratories and scientific organizations, we will highlight diferences and similarities between children and adult monitoring, we will show exemplificative cases and we'll allow the participants to challenge theirselves in the hands-on session.

Workshop 2: Good laboratory practices in a flow cytometry lab, do’s and don’ts
Organisers: Jeroen te Marvelde (Rotterdam, NL), Sjoerd Oude Alink (Rotterdam, NL)
Level: Basic. Maximum number of places: 25

Flow cytometry plays a critical role in modern clinical diagnostics, particularly in hematology and immunology. In an accredited diagnostic setting, technical precision, documentation, and standardization are directly linked to patient safety and clinical decision-making.

This pre-congress course provides a focused and practical overview of Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) tailored specifically to clinical diagnostic laboratories. Participants will review key aspects of the pre-analytical and analytical phases, with emphasis on sample processing, biosafety, instrument standardization, internal and external quality control, reagent management, competence of personnel, acquisition, troubleshooting during acquisition, compensation errors, and data management.

Also gating strategies and structured reporting will be part of the course, with hands on data analysis.

Workshop 3: CAR-T cell monitoring, why and how
Organisers: Gerulf Hänel (Munich, DE) and Veit Bücklein (Munich, DE)
Level: Intermediate level flow cytometrists. Maximum number of places: 30

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy has become a standard of care for patients with B-cell lymphomas and multiple myeloma. As clinical use expands, precise and reliable monitoring of CAR-T cells is increasingly critical. Quantitative and qualitative assessment of CAR-T cell expansion, persistence, and phenotype not only predicts therapeutic response but also correlates with adverse events such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector cell–associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS). This workshop provides a comprehensive overview of clinical CAR-T cell monitoring. This will include an introduction to current CAR-T cell detection methods, which will focus on flow cytometry but will also cover PCR-based assays highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. Attendees will receive an in-depth overview of currently available CAR-detection reagents, as well as practical guidance on sample preparation. The workshop will further address CAR-T cell quantification using the two-platform method integrating absolute leukocyte counts determined by hemacytometers versus single-platform quantification using counting beads. Besides these more technical aspects, practical guidance will be given concerning sampling time points post CAR-T cell infusion, choice of anticoagulants and stabilization agents for blood sampling, as well as monitoring of CAR-T cell related neurotoxicity by analysing cerebral spine fluid. In addition, the workshop will include hands-on analysis of patient samples, addressing gating strategies and common pitfalls in CAR-T monitoring, ensuring participants gain practical, directly applicable expertise.

Workshop 4: Panel design in the era of Spectral Flow cytometry - Advantages and Pitfalls
Organisers: Thomas Liechti (Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway), Robbert Meijer (Radboudumc, Nijmegen, NL), Willemijn Hobo (Radboudumc, Nijmegen, NL)
Level: Intermediate level flow cytometrists
Maximum number of places: 30

The technological advancements in flow cytometry and the introduction of spectral flow cytometry massively expanded the number of parameters that can be measured simultaneously at the single-cell level. However, these developments increased the complexity of and the requirements for panel and study design. This in part stems from the spectral overlap of fluorochromes and the high density of fluorochromes that are combined across the measured spectrum. Thus, minute inaccuracies may result in largely propagated measurement errors. This is particularly evident for the process of spectral unmixing, which deconvolutes the individual spectral signatures. This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to build and optimize high-dimensional staining panels using spectral flow cytometry. We will discuss sources of measurement errors and procedural caveats, which may compromise the robustness and reproducibility of spectral flow cytometry assays. Best practices covered in this workshop include optimal single-stained controls for spectral unmixing, flagging erroneous staining patterns and implications of experimental steps on the resolution of spectral flow cytometry panels. Overall, our workshop will equip participants with the necessary tools to build comprehensive spectral flow cytometry panels and strategies to detect and optimize potential caveats.

Workshop 5: Flow diagnosis of Innate errors of immunity
Organisers: Winfried Pickl (Vienna, AT) and Herbert Strobl (Venna, AT)
Level: Intermediate level flow cytometrists
Maximum number of places: 20

The innate immune system is one of our body’s ‘first-response’ mechanisms and ensures a rapid and decisive reaction to dangerous, mostly foreign pathogens that breach our bodily barriers and (potentially) cause harm. Much like other ‘first-response’ systems we are familiar with from daily life (ambulance service, fire department, police, etc.), innate immunity can also be divided into functional subunits, such as preformed or newly emerging humoral factors as well as various cellular components that perform specialized tasks related to containing the actual problem, but are also capable of amplifying the overall response when necessary. The various subunits of the innate immune system ultimately interact and ‘communicate’ their actual experience in one way or another to the components of our adaptive, learning immune system. Although ‘learning’ is not the primary characteristic of the innate immune system, we have recently come to realize that it can be ‘trained’, at least to some extent (‘trained immunity’). In this workshop, we aim to introduce participants to the key cellular components of the innate immune system, their phenotypic characteristics, and their functional activities, and to explain how their absence or functional impairment affects homeostasis in particular and their specific interaction with other parts of the immune system (humoral, adaptive) in general. A special focus will be put on the flow cytometric characterization of phenotype-function relationships and the application of current guidelines for the diagnosis of inborn errors of immunity (IEI) of innate cellular systems.