To all:
After reading the survey results and the propaganda put out by
Luminex, I couldn't remain silent. About two years ago Luminex was
attending flow meetings and touting the technology which had been developed
with Becton Dickinson's FACScan flow cytometer. It promised to be an
exciting technology for clinical labs and research labs as well. They sold
the software, computer hardware and beads to research facilities that had
these cytometers. Now after it has been proven that using the beads in a
research setting is frought with failure, the company has disavowed those
original sales. In order to get anything reproducible, it appears that a
"package" purchase is necessary. We purchased all that was available about
18 months ago and have been unsuccessful in our attempts to get a
reproducible assay system. We intend to scrap the hardware and software,
retool the computer for other purposes and warn any other research lab to
beware. The only thing we got out of it was a valuable (but expensive)
lesson.
It would be a good thing if another company developed a technology
that would permit attachment of antibodies or DNA probes without a two year
attempt to get a coupling that is reproducible. The interest and need in
the research community is certainly there.
Kathy
--------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy Schell
Supervisor, UWCCC Flow Cytometry Facility
600 Highland Ave. K4/535
Madison, WI 53792
Voice: 608-263-0313
e-mail: kschell@facstaff.wisc.edu
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