Flow Cytometry Core Facility
Facility Overview
The Flow Cytometry Facility, located at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, provides a wide variety of cytometry services for internal and external investigators with state-of-the-art sorting and analyzing capabilities.
The core has the following analyzers available for core-run analysis or self-use:
- 3 Cytek Aurora spectral analyzers (with 5 lasers, 2 have HTS)
- 2 BioRad ZE5 analyzers (5 laser)
- BD Symphony (5 lasers)
- BD Celesta with HTS (3 lasers)
- MACSQQuant VYB (3 lasers)
- Amnis FlowSight imaging cytometer
Also available are the following sorters in biosafety cabinets for core-run or self-use:
- BD FACSAria Fusion (5-laser)
- 2 FACSAria II/IIu with various capablities (4 or 5 lasers)
- Sony MA900 4 laser (for self-use)
- BD FACSMelody 3 laser (for self-use)
Most of our instruments are available for investigator self-use after training is completed. We encourage all investigators to come to the main lab at S5-322 and learn how flow cytometry can be applied to their research.
What is flow cytometry?
Cytometry is the measurement of physical/chemical characteristics of cells or other biological particles. In flow cytometry, these measurements are made as cells in fluid suspension pass, one by one, through a measurement apparatus, the flow cytometer. Flow cytometry is performed on single cell suspensions and is not appropriate for analysis of cell clumps. Flow cytometry provides discrete measurements from each cell in the sample. This provides a distribution rather than an average of the measured characteristics in the cell sample.
Why use flow cytometry?
- Thousands to millions of cells can be analyzed in a short period of time.
- Provides statistical information very quickly.
- Flexibility in the acquisition of data.
- Ability to reanalyze archived data.
- Increased sensitivity and specificity
- Separate up to four target populations simultaneously.
Flow Cytometry allows the simultaneous measurement of:
- Relative Cell Size
- Internal Cellular Complexity
- Relative Fluorescence Intensity
- Multiple color/parameter analysis