the truth is out there,... all help gratefully received!

From: Robert Ashcroft, PhD (cytomat@netcore.com.au)
Date: Fri Mar 05 1999 - 04:10:09 EST


A quiet request from Pbob, suffering from paperptosis. Call it what you
like!

I am writing a review of the use of flow cytometry analysis in truly rare
cell enumeration.
I am not looking at analysis only and not sorting, except where it's used
essentially for verification of the counting, eg to ensure that the counted
cell was actually the target cell.

I define truly rare cell enumeration as counting cells occurring at
frequencies at or below one "target" cell per thousand abundant cells. I
might consider one per 100, but presently I prefer not to, as I consider 1%
pretty trivial. I am open to argument though.

When I was a mainstream academic back in the 1980s, people such as Jim
Leary, Jan Visser, Paul Horan, Ken Bauer, Jim Cupp and Betsy Ohlsson-Wilhelm
were the pace-setters in these areas. I guess that there are others who have
now joined them in this area, especially given the advances in foetal cell
and stem cell research, including the recent revelations about CNS stem
cells.

If you have written or know of a paper where flow measurements were used to
count such cells within my definition, would you please let me know about
it. Attached files are welcome!

I prefer that you answer off-List, but should anyone want a copy of the
resultant paper-list, I will forward it upon request. Probably about the end
of the month, when my son finishes rowing season!

I plan to cover as wide an area of usage as exists out there, whether it be
transfection studies in eukaryotes or prokaryotes, bacterial mutants,
leukocytes in packed red cells, foetal bleeding, minimum residual disease,
diagnosis of metastasis, developmental-cell trafficking, monitoring
treatment regimes, clinical or fundamental, medical or biological, etc, etc.
Whatever.

It will cover use of extrinsic and intrinsic markers, a variety of laser
excitations and the benefits of multi-colour-epitope labelling vs single
fluorochromes, doublet discrimination, acquisition rates, sensitivity etc.

I am wildly out of touch with the Journal Literature, but I hope that y'all
out there can assist.

Thanks for your time and possible input.
Pbob



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 11:53:10 EST