An AHFMR equipment grant was approved this past spring budgeted towards the purchase of a flow cytometer. Instrumentation in this field is typically dominated by BD Biosicences FACS line of flow cytometer. But it quick became apparent that an array of companies offer much more competitive pricing as well as a broad range of appealing feature that would otherwise ease the work flow.

The shopping list eventually came down to FACSAria, FACSCalibur and the Beckman Coulter Cell Quanta SC. The former two were widely adopted in the field for cytokine assay. However, the Cell Quanta SC was operationally more simplistic. The collection and analysis softwares are managed by a database and allows single-cell data to be extracted. The addition of the MPL module, which has an automated liquid handler that can accept a wide range of microplate format, further ease the process of sample loading. This facilitated hands-free operation, allowing the lab to operate more efficiently. Read up more on the Beckman Coulter Cell Lab Quanta SC and the MPL Option following the links.

The flow cytometer is used in the Uludag lab to quantitate gene delivery and transfection efficiency when a fluorescence dye or an autofluorescent report protein is used.