Case Study: MedImmune achieves automated, minutes‑instead‑of‑weeks flow cytometry analysis with MathWorks (MATLAB)

MedImmune Automates and Accelerates Flow Cytometry Data Analysis

MedImmune, part of the AstraZeneca group, faced a bottleneck in analyzing high volumes of flow cytometry (FACS) data: researchers relied on manual, disparate tools and spreadsheets that were slow, inconsistent, and hard to support. To replace unreliable open-source workflows, MedImmune turned to MathWorks technologies—primarily MATLAB along with MATLAB Report Generator and the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox—to build a repeatable, automated analysis pipeline.

Using MathWorks products, MedImmune developed the FAST FACS software in just three weeks to read FlowJo-generated spreadsheets, run ANOVA and Tukey tests, and produce formatted Word reports that are emailed back to researchers and stored with usage metrics. The MathWorks-based solution cut analysis from weeks to minutes, saved the equivalent of 10 years of researcher time in the first six months, tripled developer productivity, and standardized analysis across dozens of researchers and hundreds of studies at MedImmune and AstraZeneca.

MedImmune

Jens Koopmann

Principal Bioinformatics Scientist