Tricks for High-Throughput Flow Cytometry

There is a good article in “The Scientist” this month that covers how various labs have improved the throughput for their flow cytometry applications. The piece covers some of the problems users experience with flow cytometry, namely its time-consuming nature, as well as the steps that actual users have taken to improve the process for themselves. Flow cytometry is a commonly used technique for performing cell counts and diagnosing diseases including leukemia. The use of flow cytometry to analyze cells in the fields of immunology research and drug discovery is growing thanks to new equipment that streamlines the process. A few of these solutions can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, so some of this equipment probably won’t be a feasible option for everyone. A less intensive-option that can improve processing speed is to outfit instruments with a well-plate sipper that can accept microtiter plates, such as the Empore 96-Well Solid Phase Extraction plates. The best solution will likely depend on the number of samples being processed by flow cytometry. As Steve McCellan, Senior Biological Scientist at the University of Florida, points out in the article, “Your arm would be paralyzed” if you had to test 20,000 samples with a normal flow cytometer. You can read the full article online here to find out what else the pros have to say about flow cytometry.