Hi Fellow Flow Jocks I feel pressed to comment on this one too. Especially having been on both sides of the issue, as an academic, as a government researcher, and now as a commercial lab. There are two issues here kits vs home brew and academic training of research scientists vs technological training. I have made a lot of successful "home brew" reagents and methods. These helped my ex-boss get the trip to Sweden. Many worked well, some worked most of the time. And I learned a lot in making them. But now my licensed reference lab operates under GLP for FDA submissions and produces clinical results for patient treatment. Any deviations we might do from the kit/reagent/stain/MAb manufacture's instructions require a heck of a lot of data and record keeping. If we do a "home brew" we need to produce and keep seemingly endless records for justification, validation and QC requirements. Working 90% of the time doesn't cut it now. So, commercial kits are here to stay. In general I think they are more consistent and higher quality than the average in lab concoctions. Note is said IN GENERAL and AVERAGE. I'm not praising or picking on anyone in particular. As Deborah pointed out, students and recent graduates (including PhD's who are supposed to be trained as scientists to perform "independent, original research") are not the classical academic scientists, but are really trained to use technology. No value judgement intended, but the difference is notable. It seems a safe bet that future research will be done by many high level technically trained laboratorians under the direction of a few "real" scientists. A higher and higher proportion of biological/medical research is performed biotech/pharm companies. I have really noticed that real scientists are few in number at these laboratories. There, research really requires lot of commercial kits, even for things like simple buffers. Putting the burden of correct formulation and QC (and results?) on the manufacturer, not the user. We produce a couple of "kits" for our clients to process/pre process samples before they get delivered to us. One of our clients says our kits are too expensive, they can make the stain/buffer/etc cheaper. They now make their own, and have had a heck of a lot of botched experiments because someone forgot minimal QC. Of course the costs of these foul-ups for animals, cultures, etc, let alone their labor hours, are not included in their comparison of the price for our kit. In some cases a more expensive well QC'd kit is really a cost savings. Hope to share in the Champagne Waxy ------------------------ From: Deborah Berglund <umbbd@gemini.oscs.montana.edu> Subject: RE: Intracellular bubbly Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 08:47:28 -0700 (MST) To: Cytolist List Member <Cytolist@fastsys.com> Cc: Cytometry Mailing List <cytometry@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu>, Calman Prussin <CPRUSSIN@niaid.nih.gov> > > I have to get in on this one. We are constantly being dismayed at the > lack of knowledge of students because of easy to use kits and instrument. > Some of them have no clue what they are doing or why, they just follow the > directions. This is not a good thing. > > We are poor and cheap and make up most of our own reagents, leaving the > kits to those who do routine stuff and don't really care why things work. > > Have a glass of champagne for me! > > Deb Berglund > > > On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Mario Roederer wrote: > > > > > >I will be happy to go hand to hand at the upcoming FASEB meeting with any of > > >your technical staff examining Ag specific responses by flow and will bet a > > >case of Champagne (OK, 1/2 a case) that my "notoriously variable cookbook" > > >system will have less noise and as good a signal as the out of the box "fix > > >and perm" kit from Caltag. Are we on? Kevin Holmes can be the referee, > > >results to reported to the Cytometry mailing list. > > > > Cool! I'm in on this one! Let's up the ante, and make it a full case of > > Roederer champagne (i.e., the good stuff). I'll bet on Calman. > > > > (By the way, we use "cookbook" methods that are, by today's standards, > > quite dated--and they still give us excellent results that are > > reproducible. We use PharMingen antibodies and home-made fix/perm > > solutions). > > > > mr > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ > _/ _/ _/ > _/_/ _/_/_/ _/ Mail Server Reminder > _/ _/ _/ > _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list send a message to "FSI_Mail_Server". > Leave the subject blank and enter "unsubscribe cytolist address" on the > first line of the messge body. Replace "address" with your email address. > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ---------------End of Original Message----------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Name: Dr. Waxdal E-mail: Dr. Waxdal <Waxy@fastsys.com> Date: 03/18/99 Time: 18:09:00 --------------------------------------------------------
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