Sony today announced the launch of the SFA – Life Sciences Cloud Platform, a flow cytometry data analysis cloud solution that can quickly identify rare cells, such as cancer cells and stem cells, from a wide variety of cell populations, using data obtained from flow cytometers. A flow cytometer is a powerful tool that analyzes cell characteristics by irradiating laser light onto cells stained with a fluorescent reagent that emits light under specific conditions, which then detects the emitted light as scattered light and fluorescent. This analysis method is called flow cytometry and can measure the size and number of a wide variety of cells, as well as information on the cell surface and interior content (such as structure, functions and biomarkers) very rapidly—analyzing tens of thousands of cells in under one second.
The SFA – Life Sciences Cloud Platform is a cloud-based solution that can efficiently perform a wide array of analysis protocols, ranging from conventional analysis including gating, in which only specific cell populations are selected for analysis and quantification based on differences in scattered light and flourescence signal intensity, to advanced analysis such as dimensionality reduction, which enables a two-dimensional view of multi-dimensional information, and clustering, which automatically classifies cell populations.
The solution is compatible with Sony’s flagship ID7000 spectral cell analyzer that delivers streamlined multicolor cell analysis with more than 44 colors. The raw data output and analysis results from the ID7000 software can be directly imported and analyzed without any conversion. In addition, this solution features BL-FlowSOM, a newly developed algorithm that speeds up FlowSOM, one of the clustering methods. Furthermore, because each algorithm is pre-installed in the cloud environment, immediate analysis is possible, and results from the data analysis can be managed and shared among users.
