xMAP Houston Highlights Caitlin Butterworth This past month, Luminex’s xMAP® Connect event took place in Houston, TX, providing occasion for leading multiplex experts to converge and build upon the collaborative reservoir of knowledge shared amongst this exclusive community of xMAP insiders. Houston’s xMAP Connect conference offered an elite lineup of speakers specializing in diverse fields across health science, all of whom having furthered their research through xMAP Technology. Here are some key highlights from their presentations.
in India while 100 million more vaccine doses have been approved and designated for individuals in Botswana. Dr. Maria Walker, an assistant professor at the University of Houston who works in the University of Houston Eye Clinic, introduced xMAP Connect attendees to her experience implementing xMAP Technology to analyze human tear fluid in order to better understand the biology behind dry eye. Making use of xMAP Technology’s flexibility, Dr. Walker ran a cytokine panel on tear fluid—a notoriously complex substance—to search for interleukins and matrix metalloproteinases. While her work with dry eye continues, Dr. Walker seeks to use all mechanisms of her research to build a better understanding of dry eye and its most effective treatment options; she also hopes her study will help establish protocol for tear fluid analysis in the future.
One such speaker was Dr. Fraser Symmans, pathologist and serving director at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Symmans and his research team established a custom, xMAP-based assay to investigate a group of genes capable of predicting how individuals with HR+/HER2breast cancer will likely respond to endocrine therapy.
Illustrating the flexible application of xMAP Technology further, Dr. Jair Espindola-Netto of the Mayo Clinic expressed how he and his research team leveraged xMAP Technology to better understand cell senescence and its role within aging. In studying anti-aging senolytic drugs, Dr. Espindola-Netto relies upon xMAP Technology to help characterize proteins within cells linked with senescence so he and his team may better understand how susceptible cells will respond to senolytic medication. With the help of xMAP Technology to collect data efficiently, reliably, and precisely, Dr. Espindola-Netto and his team are better able to understand how individuals may best combat the degenerative effects of aging and remain healthier for longer.
Dr. Jackie Surls, Director of LuminexPLORELabs, Former Luminex intern Atharwa Monthe and Dr. Stephen Angeloni
In sharing how xMAP Technology has supported some of the most dynamic points of their research, the participants of xMAP Connect Houston were able to not only acquire a better understanding of xMAP’s flexible application and numerous capabilities, but build upon the knowledge, experiential understanding, and potential this technology empowers in a community environment defined by collaboration and collective progress.
On choosing xMAP Technology to advance his work, Dr. Symmans explained that he and his team “made the choice for (an) xMAPbased (assay) on some preferences and some workflow logistics that (they) thought would be advantageous.” Not only did xMAP Technology offer “outstanding performance;” the xMAP assays’ “strong reproducibility” and “excellent concordance in different labs,” made it a flexible and “very stable platform” for Dr. Symmans’ work. Also presenting was Dr. Jeroen Pollet, an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine and a director on the Vaccine Development Team at Texas Children’s Hospital. Deploying xMAP Technology, Dr. Pollet and his team were able to test the novel, low-cost alternative COVID-19 vaccine he and his team had developed. With time of the essence, xMAP’s multiplex technology enabled Dr. Pollet to efficiently and effectively interrogate study participants’ immune response to his nascent COVID-19 vaccine. xMAP Technology allowed Dr. Pollet and his team to target multiple analytes simultaneously and acquire reliable data more quickly, expediting the time needed to clear the potentially life-saving vaccine for approval. Dr. Pollet’s COVID-19 vaccine, Corbevax, successfully received emergency use authorization and has already been used to vaccinate 10 million children aged 10-12
Dr. Bobby Bhatia, Luminex Business Manager
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