Dave: We had a project that required sorting bovine sperm - most of
the project was done using the MACS system. It was clearly more
economical, faster, easier and made sense (but no cents!).
All of the checking and evaluation of the sort was done by flow
(which made dollars).
The bottom line is that these systems do not reduce the use of core
flow instruments in the long run - they are more appropriate than
flow in some instances, and therefore should be used.
It is pretty hard to charge for such a service. I suspect most
investigators would purchase the hardware since it is relatively
inexpensive. The key is to link your "analysis" service to the use of
the MACS. In most cases, anyone who uses this technology will have to
check the sort by flow - Sometimes getting
a small percentage of a big pot is better than getting nothing!
Regards
Paul
J.Paul Robinson, Purdue University Cytometry Labs
robinson@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu PH:317-494 6449 FAX:317-494 0517
web http://www.cyto.purdue.edu