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Facility News
Happy News Year š! The FCF Staff wish you all the best for 2024 ! May all your Dry January and Veganuary resolutions last for as long as your new gym membership š !
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The only good resolution we took this year is to listen to you guys and support you in any way we can ! We ain't gonna break that one. As a matter of fact, we would like to ask your opinion on how we are doing at the moment and what we could do to provide a better service. Please take a few minutes to fill up our 2024 feedback form ! You have until February 29th so you have the time to come up with suggestions.
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In this month FACS Tips, we are helping you not getting lost with all the changes that happened in the Epalinges site. It is for the greater good and greater Science !
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Laura Cabizzosu won the mug this month, Congratulations !
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Each month, we will give away one of those special and unique mug designed by the FCF team. Answer correctly to our 3 questions and you can have a chance to win !
Please take few minutes to answer the quiz HERE.
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FACS Tips
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A New Beginning
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A New Year
If you couldnāt tell, thereās been quite a number of changes to our Epalinges facility recently. With all the adding, subtracting, and moving of instruments, along with other procedural changes, we thought we would put a pause on our normal Flow Cytometry tips and rather get everyone up to date on everything new.
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Goodbye
This year we said goodbye to our LSRII-B, which after almost 20 years of service has been put into retirement. Itās a testament to how well collectively weāve all taken care of these instruments through diligent cleaning and attention to problems, along with a significant contribution from our machine guru Danny, to keep these old machines running so well for so long. We still have jointly 4 LSRII machines running between our two sites so donāt expect them to all be disappearing any time soon.
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Hello
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With such high demand for our Aurora spectral machine, often filling up the IRIS booking calendar each week, we got a second Aurora instrument which is already installed and ready to go. This machine has the exact configuration of the previous one, however it will require a new user account to be made on it. With this comes an interesting question as to the possibility of taking previously recorded single stains from one machine and using them to unmix a sample from the other. At the present moment we would advise against this, but there may be opportunities for syncing up samples across the two machines and this will be something weāll explore going forward with the help of the Cytek specialists. If you still havenāt been trained on our spectral machines what a great way to start the year and advance your expertise in flow cytometry. We even hope to have more advanced training available for autofluorescence subtraction and unmixing troubleshooting in the near future with the Cytek team. Additionally, the FCF will have the possibility to purchase a full spectrum flow cytometer that will be installed at the Agora by mid-2024.
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Finally, we can say that our highly anticipated new sorter has arrived. The FACS Discover S8 is sitting patiently in what will become our new P2 level room here in Epalinges. While Iāve already discussed this machine several times, now we can finally get a chance to all see what it can do. Our staff at Epalinges will be trained on this machine from January 9th to 12th and after that we should hopefully be able to get started with all the exciting experiments you can envision for this first of kind machine. Keep in mind that this sorter is full-spectrum and be able to sort cells stained with a large number of colors. A 50-colors experiment using exactly the same instrument has been published recently ā50-color phenotyping of the human immune system with in-depth assessment of T cells and dendritic cellsā.
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With all these spectral machines available weāve also introduced a Spectral Panel Wall of Fame, to celebrate our users who have built panels of 18 colours and above. To get your name on this illustrious board just email a member of the FCF staff a list of your markers used and the gating strategy to be included in a binder next to the machine.
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Upgrades
Thanks to Danny the LSRII-D will be getting a nice upgrade to start the year with the addition of a UV laser. With this it should have a similar optical configuration to the Fortessa (SORP), with the goal that users can more easily distribute their machine time across these two machines and ideally we should have greater availability.
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Changes
With an aim to cut down on our impact on the environment, we have largely cut back on the use of bleach to treat our machine waste. Traditionally, we would add upwards of 100ml of concentrated bleach to our waste tanks before dumping this down the drain, however this does come with consequences. Simply, bleach is toxic to waterways and aquatic life and any reductions to this would be a positive step. Going forward we will instead be using Sanosil for decontaminating waste. Sanosil combines hydrogen peroxide, a potent oxidizing disinfectant, with silver, an effective biocide, to produce a more sustainable cleaning solution. Using the Sanosil is very simple, when you have a full waste tank, swap in the empty tank sitting next to the machine and add 200ml of the pre-prepared bottles weāve left available. The Sansoil requires 45 minutes to disinfect the waste before it can be poured down the drain.
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Additionally, weāve simplified our machine cleaning procedure to come into line with what is currently done at the Agora for our BD instruments. The first step, Aniosyme detergent, will no longer be included. Instead the process will be simplified to just three steps, FACS Rinse, FACS Clean, and DI Water (5 min each). So, thereās even less excuse now to not do your required machine cleaning after each use.
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Trainings
If you want to refresh your mind for free with the theory about flow cytometry and cell staining, a session is organized every other week at the Biopole3 and at the Agora. Contact Jean-FranƧois Mayol (jean-francois.mayol@unil.ch) if you would like to attend one of these sessions.
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Reminder
We have more and more users and also companies here at the facility. While we can be preoccupied with our experiments it is important that the bench has to remain clean and the tips bags trashed when full at the end of your booking time. We try and leave ethanol spray bottles at each machine and we can show you where we keep the spare tip bags.
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In Conclusion
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And with all that, weāre ready to start an exciting new year! As always feel free to reach out to the staff if you have any questions.
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