Modeling Cell-Cycle Data Using Flow Cytometry and Mathematics

MaryAnn Case
Peter Eggleston Connor
Sage Piersel
Jake Scott
Kemble Yates

The Applied Mathematics Master's degree students are working with a local company, TreeStar, to build effective mathematical models for cell cycle data. TreeStar creates and markets the leading software package -- FlowJo -- for sale with flow cytometers. Flow cytometers are used by laboratories around the world for analyzing blood samples. A key problem to which flow cytometers are applied is analyzing samples of blood which exhibit normal cell cycle behavior, or anomalous behavior such as leukemia or other cancers. This panel will discuss preliminary results on methods for analyzing data to determine if it comes from healthy or diseased samples, and to potentially assess effectiveness of treatments to diseased cases.