Virginia Litwin

Since 2010, Virginia Litwin has been a Principal Scientist in Hematology at Covance Central Laboratory Services. She is the global scientific lead for all flow cytometry method development and validation. She was the recipient of the 2014 Covance Science and Technology Award.

Virginia obtained a Ph.D. in Virology/Immunology from the University of Iowa. As a graduate student, she was a pioneer in the application of flow cytometry to the characterization of virally infected cells, and the function of viral glycoproteins. During her post-doctoral fellowship at DNAX Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, she identified one of the first KIR receptors (KIR3DL1) on human NK cells. This was followed by research on HIV viral entry and fusion at Progenics Pharmaceuticals. Since 1999 when she joined the clinical pharmacology/experimental medicine department at Bristol-Myers Squibb, she has focused primarily on the development and validation of flow cytometry-based biomarker methods for clinical trials.

She founded the Flow Cytometry Action Program Committee of the AAPS Ligand Binding Assay Bioanalytical Focus Group, and is an active contributor to the International Clinical Cytometry Society (ICCS), and the International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC). She is an editor for Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, and serves on the editorial board of Cytometry Part B, Clinical Cytometry. She recently edited the book, Flow Cytometry in Drug Discovery and Development (John Wiley & Sons), and the Special Issue of the Journal of Immunological Methods on Flow Cytometry Biomarkers and Translational Medicine.