The Flow Cytometry Core Facility is based in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, and is located in room 383 of Criss III. The core provides equipment and services to identify, quantify, analyze, and isolate cells in complex mixtures (like blood, for example). The facility is equipped with two state-of-the-art flow cytometers:

a Yeti for up to 15-color analysis and High Throughput Screening, and
a FACSAria for multicolor analysis and high speed sorting.
In addition to the computers that run these 2 instruments, the facility has a workstation setup as a data server and data analysis station for our users. All computers in the facility are connected to the Creighton network and have both black & white and color laser printers. All data generated in the facility is routinely backed up and saved permanently.

Facility users outside of Creighton can have direct access to their data using a departmental server on which their data can be loaded for the user to download and analyze in their own laboratory. This makes data analysis especially easy for off campus users.

Along with the 2 flow cytometers, the facility also has a Luminex 200 multiplex analyzer which allows users to “simultaneously measure up to 100 analytes in a single microplate well using very small sample volumes.” This system has generally used by investigators at Creighton to look at cytokine or protein expression profiling, although it can also be used to look at gene expression and genotyping.

The core facility also has other instrumentation available for use by investigators. We have two magnetic cell separation units (a VarioMACS and a QuadMACS) from Miltenyi Biotech which use monoclonal antibodies and magnetic beads to enrich specific cell populations for further purification on the FACSAria, analysis or cell culture. We also have a Coulter counter (Z1), a Nexcelom Cellometer K2 cell counter and a Cytospin cyto-centrifuge that we make available at no cost to anyone on campus for performing cell counts, an IEC Centra 8R refrigerated centrifuge, a Nikon E-400 microscope for light microscopy and a Partec CyScope Plus HP for fluorescence microscopy.