We are very happy with the Cyto-Mine system. Working with the Sphere Fluidics is a piece of cake despite the fact that the company is located abroad, in UK. Support of the instrument was tremendous, any obstacles were timely resolved by either US representative, or by application specialists in UK via an online conference call. We had a demo before making a purchasing decision (which lasted the whole week) at which our researchers were able to see the unit in action, had some preliminary hands-on experience and got our specific antibody-producing cells separated to monoclonal level and evaluated in accordance to their antibody production efficiency.
Separation conditions were partially optimized during the demo and the results exceeded our expectation. Great feature of the system is its ability to tell you whether you have gotten a single cell, or a cluster of cells placed in a separate well of the 96-well receiving plate. A dozen of plates can be easily filled up by the system with monoclonal producing cells during a day-long experiment. The system is relatively compact and could be maintained within a laminar-flow hood (yet this is not required because sterile conditions are stably kept inside the system). Software is very user-friendly so operating the system is relatively simple but the operator certainly needs to get some training to master it (training was done during the installation procedure).
Training was included in the purchase, which is good. Operating the system requires a special single-use cartridge, which is not quite cheap and sometimes not quickly available from the company, so you would need to stock such cartridges in your lab (or order these well in advance), which is one of the downsides of the instrument. Other than that, the system has been flawless, a real working horse and totally worth of the money paid for it.
Application :
Single Cell Analysis and Monoclonality Assurance System