Funds are requested for the purchase of a Sony SH800 cell sorter configured with 405, 488, 561 and 640 nm excitation lasers and fitted with a biocontainment enclosure. The requested instrument addresses the need for increased flow cytometry sorting capacity of the Flow and Image Cytometry Shared Resource (FICSR) at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The requested equipment fulfills the need of a user-friendly sorting platform that can be self-operated without the need to schedule time with FICSR personnel. This increases flexibility of access to the sorting equipment which is important for the NIH-funded researchers since the sorting is usually an intermediary processing step between sample preparation and downstream sample analysis activities. The pre- and post-sort activities commonly are labor- and time-intensive and when dependent on clinical material, the sorts are difficult to rigorously schedule due to the logistics of surgery schedules which necessarily have to be flexible. Currently, the annual usage of the available sorting equipment at the FICSR exceeds 80% of capacity, and thus severely limits the availability of this service to NIH funded researchers. The decision on the specific sorter requested was based on a year-long evaluation that included the specific configuration needs for the NIH-funded user base, narrowing down the choice to 3 candidate instruments based on experiences of other flow cytometry core facilities nationwide and a final decision based on onsite demos of all three candidate instruments with potential users sorting and operating the sorters with their own samples.
Funding is requested for a Sony SH800 cell sorter with Biocontainment unit. This equipment is requested to expand the two currently available cell sorters at Roswell Park Cancer Institute to meet the high demand for these services. This demand has reached levels where access to these services is compromised for NIH-funded cancer researchers whose health related research projects depend on this availability.
