Reagents: bold question, requesting honest opinions

From: Maciej Simm (simmmmer@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Nov 15 2000 - 15:55:27 EST


I've been hesitant to bring this up in the group because decisions
about different vendors are "private stuff" from lab to lab. But hey,
it's the Internet.

When shopping around for monoclonal AB's to be used in clinical
studies, what's the best deal?

As far as my own research, I've been looking at Becton Dickinson,
Caltag, eBioscience, Coulter and Pharmingen (with hands on experience
only with BD and Caltag reagents).

Can all those companies' reagents be used in clinical studies? I know
in the DAIDS IQA we're asked to list the source of our antibodies but
they don't really say that we can't use any particular company.

My own impressions:

Becton Dickinson - Packaging is excellent, service is excellent,
prices are high, antibodies usually not titratable (100tests is
really  100 tests)

Caltag - Packaging is poor (bottles small, caps suck), service is
excellent, prices are low, antibodies can be titrated down 2-3 fold
(100 tests can be really 200+ tests, depending on antibody)

I hope some of the clinical flow labs out there can comment on some
pro's and con's of the different companies, in categories of:

* price (base? discount?)
* quality/reliability/reproducibility
* packaging (both shipping and the actual containers)
* support/service

thanks for any (honest!!!) feedback :)

Maciej

PS I'd be more than happy to summarize this topic, I'm sure there are
others who are interested.

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