From Colombia to Colorado: Marcela Henao Tamayo's Scientific Path

MIP assistant professor and CSU Flow Cytometry & Cell Sorting core facility director Marcela Henao Tamayo, PhD, MD grew up in Colombia. She first had the opportunity, in medical school, to work in a research laboratory focused on transplant organ compatibility, when she fell in love with immunology. Upon finishing school, she joined a tuberculosis project in need of a medical doctor, to enroll Colombian tuberculosis patients in immunological research. Henao Tamayo saw firsthand the reality of the global TB epidemic; with common patients such as children, pregnant mothers, people from indigenous communities, and recently incarcerated individuals.

As she became more interested in the immunology research of tuberculosis, Henao Tamayo met Dr. Patrick Brennan, a founding member of the CSU Mycobacteria Research Laboratories (MRL), at an international conference. He openly invited everyone he met to come to join the growing Colorado State University MRL. Interested, Henao Tamayo contact Dr. Brennan and quickly found herself with a research scientist position in Dr. Ian Orme’s lab, where she expanded her immunology experience and completed a PhD in Microbiology. 

Promoted to faculty in 2014, Henao Tamayo actively pursued research funding to establish her own research endeavors within the CSU Mycobacteria Research Laboratories. Having to build a research laboratory, both equipment & personnel, from the ground up, strengthened her appreciation for the new chapter in her career: “I think there is a very special connection when you have people working with you or for you in the lab. There is something about they have to like the research that you are doing of course, but also they have to like the way you are doing the research…. [in] that sense, it’s a relationship that is very special. That’s why I think (a lab) is like a small family.”

Currently the Henao Tamayo lab focuses on testing different tuberculosis vaccines and vaccine strategies to boost the immune system, to better their long-term protection against tuberculosis infection. Building off the flow cytometry methods of her research roots in Colombia, the lab analyzes how the organs in the body are responding to these various vaccines. By evaluating different cells through flow cytometers, they are able to cell sort and select exceptional cells for adoptive cell transfer, hopefully improving TB infection protection in the hosts. 

Flow cytometry is a technique using colored lasers to detect & measure the physical/chemical characteristics of each cell within a larger sample of cells. The optical data provided can be of interest to many different research fields, however, the complex machines involved can be difficult to operate & understand.

By gathering these specialized machines on campus, the CSU Flow Cytometry & Cell Sorting core facility pursues their mission of helping others use the tools & techniques to “do the science the best possible way they can”, and build university expertise towards someday advancing the international field of flow cytometry. Just this year, the facility purchased a cutting-edge 4-laser Cytek Aurora Spectral flow cytometer, with a highly-desired yellow laser, capable of 20+ color assays using overlapping fluorophores.

From the start of her research career, Henao Tamayo found flow cytometry to be a great analysis method that provides large amounts of data rapidly. However, having also experiencing the frustrating complexity of the equipment, Henao Tamayo channeled her energy into developing her expertise in the instruments and methodology of flow cytometry. Her 10+ years of experience include developing numerous flow protocols, attending formal training and receiving several certifications, most importantly internationally-recognized ASCP Specialist in Cytometry in 2017. 

Looking towards the future of the CSU Flow Cytometry & Cell Sorting core facility as its director, Henao Tamayo states “… I do believe that flow cytometry is becoming a big piece of science…. It is allowing us to evaluate so many things, and it’s generating so much data, that we actually need to have not just a core of machines and servicing the machines, but we also need to have eventually, people in the [CSU Flow Cytometry] core that are going to help people analyze the results that they are getting.”

In addition to her undergraduate microbiology courses, Henao Tamayo has taught two graduate-level courses aimed at exposing more individuals (various CSU graduate students, post-doctoral candidates & research scientists) to flow cytometry, and enhancing their knowledge & application of flow cytometry in their respective research.

This summer, Henao Tamayo led a group of CSU researchers from her lab and the CSU Flow Cytometry Core to present & network at the international CYTO 2019 meeting of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) in Vancouver, Canada. A PhD student from Marcela’s lab, Amy Fox, was awarded one of four ISAC Outstanding Poster Awards from a selection of several hundred posters for her research poster titled “Developing an R-based Data Analysis Pipeline to Analyze Flow Cytometry Data through Unsupervised Clustering Analysis.” Clearly, Dr. Marcela Henao Tamayo’s passion & hard work to advance the knowledge of flow cytometry at Colorado State University is making an impact!