Ours is a fairly small facility, but we have successfully automated quite well. For high-throughput, we have three FACSCaliburs equipped with MAS units; these are capable of sampling even 396 deep-well plates. Although there were some growing pains with the MAS units during the first year, we have been very happy with them over that past year. We do several plates a week using them. While fairly pricy, they pay for themselves in salary savings (or, conversely, productivity) very quickly. All in all, our facility analyzes over 7000 tubes a month, requiring an average of 25 GBytes a month. We are expecting this to nearly double over the next year, and do not anticipate significant problems in doing so. We have written some fairly simple Applescripts that move the data on a regular basis to our Terabyte server (for which we paid $30K, unfortunately, because they are MUCH cheaper now--for example, Apple's 1U, which is only a few thousand dollars per terabyte--a fraction of the cost of a flow cytometer). Our goal is to keep ALL data online all the time, and I anticipate no problem in maintaining this goal. We have "only" 300 GBytes of data for the past 2 years, and data storage price is still dropping dramatically. We use FlowJo to do the high-throughput batch analysis; if your terabyte server is set up with FTP, you can analyze your data from anywhere in the world--no need for users to have to manage their own data or carry it around on disks. Even without FTP access, you can analyze your data using an AppleTalk connection. So I don't share your disappointment at high throughput; we've managed to do it with commercial products and very little in house effort (the applescripts). Macintoshes rule! mr (Disclaimer: I have no conflicts of interest with BD, the manufacturer of the FACSCalibur and MAS units; as an original co-author of FlowJo, I do get royalties for it. These views are mine and do not represent those of the US Government). >We are a rather high volume biotech flow lab. I sent out a desperate >letter over a year ago about the lack of automated cytometers. The >situation is much worse this year. The volume is increasing (we >generate up to 2.6 GB data a month - just analyzes, without the >sorter files). Most of that "manually" on the Caliburs. A genuine, >authentic sweatshop like the ones in Asia making sneakers or other >garment. > >The flow cytometry labs are the bottleneck of biotech research. We >slow down the progress by not being able to handle enough samples. >The manufacturers admit the problem, acknowledge the need but in >response new 9 color MANUAL cytometers come to the market with the >promise of a FUTURE automated sample handling extension as a teaser. > >The sad and disappointing aspect is that the whole biotech and other >research is automated. The technology is out there. Only we have no >access to it because no one bothers to adopt it (if they can not >invent such devices). > >How do you run 500+ sample experiments? > > >Regards, Akos > >(PS: This is a 10+ years old request. )
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