CytoFLEX LX flow cytometer

Project Summary: Acquisition of a CytoFLEX LX Flow Cytometer The Integrated Imaging Center (IIC) at Johns Hopkins University is applying to purchase a Beckman Coulter CytoFLEX LX flow cytometer to replace an existing BD FACSCalibur instrument. The existing instrument has reached the end of its service life. The CytoFLEX has a number of

major upgrades allowing significantly more experimental modalities to be used. These include more lasers, many more analysis parameters, small particle size measurements with a side scatter detector, absolute concentration measurements and the option of a multi-well plate compatible autoloader. This instrument will be used for a range of ongoing research projects

including work on kinetically assembled nanoparticles for mRNA delivery in cancer treatment, the study of Alzheimer disease progression, the characterization of photoreceptor development pathways, how DNA replication influences epigenomics in stem cells and the use of nucleic acid nanotubes to treat primary and metastatic tumors.

These projects will directly benefit from the expansion of the number of parameters available for analysis, allow many more signals to be simultaneously measured, and much better data on complex interaction between multiple components. This will generate equivalent or better data from many fewer experiments, when many components are involved. By having more laser

sources, we will have more flexibility in dye choices and the ability to truly use the high parameter analysis possible on this machine. The addition of a 96-well plate auto-loader will allow much higher throughput of samples and dramatically reduce preparation time as many experimental workflows already use 96 well plates for sample preparation, enabling these

plates to be simply loaded into the flow cytometer rather than transferred into tubes for analysis. Overall, this instrument will enable a range of new experiments and increase the productivity of existing experimental workflows. This will increase our basic understanding of a range of cellular processes and help speed the translation of emerging therapeutics from the lab to the

clinic.