How to Measure NAD Redox State Using Flow Cytometry and What It Can Tell Us About T-Cell Function
T-cell metabolism is increasingly recognized as a key regulator of immune function, shaping how T cells respond to infection, vaccination, and cancer. Among the many metabolic pathways involved, NAD biology and mitochondrial redox state play a central but underexplored role in CD8 T-cell responses.
Existing tools for probing these pathways at the single-cell level have been limited, making it difficult to compare mitochondrial NAD content and redox state across different immune cell populations.
Redox Index and Capacity Analysis (RICA) is a flow cytometry-based method for measuring NAD biology in living immune cells at single-cell resolution. By interrogating mitochondrial NAD in living cells, the RICA assay makes it possible to track how NAD redox state and pool capacity shift with T-cell differentiation and activation. Both in vitro and in more heterogeneous ex vivo settings such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, RICA offers a level of resolution that bulk biochemical NAD assays have generally been unable to provide.
Join Alicia Bostwick-Galaviz, PhD candidate in Immunology at Dartmouth College’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology, under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Usherwood. Alicia will introduce the RICA (redox index and capacity analysis) assay, a novel flow cytometry-based technique she developed to compare mitochondrial NAD content and redox state across immune cell populations.
This work was published in The Journal of Immunology in 2026 and provides researchers with a new tool for probing the metabolic underpinnings of T-cell function. Alicia will walk through how the RICA assay works, how to perform it, and how it can be applied to interrogate T-cell responses in both in vitro and ex vivo settings, with direct relevance to immunometabolism, redox biology, and the study of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes.
Thursday
9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
5 PM BST / 6 PM CEST
Redox Index and Capacity Analysis: A Novel Flow Cytometry Assay for Understanding T-Cell Responses
You will learn:
- The importance of NAD biology in T-cell responses
- What the mitochondrial NAD redox index and capacity analysis (RICA) assay is and how to perform it
- How to apply the RICA assay to interrogate T-cell responses in vitro and ex vivo
Speaker
Alicia Bostwick-Galaviz
PhD candidate, Department of Microbiology & Immunology,
Dartmouth College
Alicia Bostwick-Galaviz is a PhD candidate in Immunology at Dartmouth College, where she conducts research in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Usherwood. She earned her BS in Biology, with a minor in Biochemistry, from Hope College. Her academic achievements have been recognized through prestigious honors including the Goldwater Scholarship, Beckman Scholars Award, and ASBMB Undergraduate Research Award.
Alicia’s research focuses on understanding immune cell metabolism and the role of NAD biology in CD8 T-cell function. At Dartmouth, she developed the redox index and capacity analysis (RICA) assay, a novel flow cytometry-based technique to compare mitochondrial NAD content and redox state across immune cell populations. This work was published in The Journal of Immunology in 2026. Alicia’s current interests include immunometabolism, redox biology, and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, with the goal of uncovering new insights into the metabolic underpinnings of T-cell responses in health and disease.
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