A request is made for the purchase of a new BD FACS Vantage/DiVa cell sorter at The University of Vermont (UVM) to replace the 13-year old Coulter Elite flow cytometer. The main reasons are the need for high-speed sorting, 4-way sorting, and 6 color analysis. None of these needs can be met with the existing Elite instrument despite having made all possible upgrades. The flow cyometry facility at UVM has 13 Principal Investigators who use the facility on a regular basis, with 5 major users (>9% each). All of these investigators have federal funding (12 with NIH grants, 1 with a USDA grant) plus other foundation grants. There are a total of 23 grants (19 NIH) that support the facility university. It is thus serving a very broad community and needs to fulfill many different requirements. The BD FACS Vantage/DiVa was chosen over other flow cytometers because of the combined abilities for high-speed sorting, with 4-way sorting options, and digital compensation, which is collectively not available on other instruments. The UVM flow cytometry facility is run by a highly experienced manager with 13 years of experience in flow cytometry. It has a faculty advisor from the Immunobiology Program with 18 years of flow cytometry experience, as well as an internal advisory committee who are all long-time flow cytometry users. The facility is open to all UVM investigators and is one of the busiest core facilities on campus. There is no other flow cytometry facility within a two-hour drive of UVM, and no other comparable cell sorter on campus is available to investigators. Thus, obtaining and maintaining a new machine is absolutely critical to the research of numerous investigators at UVM.
