HORUS Advances Development of Standardised Flow Cytometry Protocol

ImmunoConcEpT Hosts Partners from Universitat Des Saarlandes (USAAR) and Vall d’Hebron University Hospital (VHIR)

From left to right: Candida Guckelmus (USAAR), Tina Schmidt (USAAR), Laura Donadeu Casassas (VHIR), Anaïs Schneller (ImmunoConcEpT/UBx)

HORUS continues to make steady progress towards strengthening and harmonising immunomonitoring workflows across participating partners.

In February 2026, ImmunoConcEpT hosted partners from USAAR and VHIR, who focused on developing a standardised flow cytometry protocol that will be incorporated into the workflow planned for Work Package 4 (WP4), alongside the ELISpot assay. This important milestone aims to ensure consistency, reproducibility and high-quality immune response assessment across all study sites.

Discussions among the technical partners are ongoing as the protocol undergoes further refinement and optimisation. This collaborative effort is focused on enhancing assay performance and ensuring that the future flow cytometry panel meets the scientific and technical requirements necessary for robust validation. Once finalised, the panel will be tested on samples from healthy donors before being validated within the project's validation cohort.

The group also took the opportunity to review the overall progress of the HORUS project and discuss the next steps. These productive exchanges enabled partners to assess achievements to date, align on upcoming priorities and coordinate the activities required to maintain momentum in the coming months.

As the project moves forward, continued collaboration between partners will be key to finalising the WP4 workflow and preparing the flow cytometry panel for validation, bringing HORUS closer to its objective of advancing standardised immune monitoring approaches.

Further updates will be shared as the consortium progresses towards the next stages of development and validation.