The Flow and Imaging Cytometry Facility of the Massey Cancer Center was inaugurated in 1976. Since then, this facility has gone through six generations of flow cytometers to the two instruments currently in use, a Coulter Elite and a Coulter Excel. The Elite is a multi-laser networked system. operated only by the technician, and the Excel is an automated, user-friendly system that can be operated by users of the core facility. Since its beginning, this core facility has served over 80 laboratories. The Director and Co-director, James M. Collins and W. McLean Grogan, have established considerable expertise in a wide variety of flow cytometric methods and have published a monograph on this technology. In addition to routine batch analysis, the resource provides novel and innovative analytical approaches, while never losing sight of the requirement of the individual users and the questions being addressed by their grant-funded research programs. Drs. Grogan and Collins closely follow the analyses performed by the core facility, insuring quality control, and advising facility users on alternative, often novel, approaches to experimental design and data analyses. As part of the process of constantly upgrading the Flow Cytometry Core Facility, Drs. Grogan and Collins obtained an imaging cytometer (ACAS 570, Meridian Associates) in order to perform analyses on anchorage-dependent cells, e.g., neuronal, kidney, skin, lung, fibroblasts. This core facility attempts to customize the services it offers to meet the needs of each researcher, whenever possible, and in doing this it has had a major impact on the research here at VCU.
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