The Flow Core Facility is open to the USF community as well as researchers outside of USF.  It is a fee based unit, although the fees only partially cover the cost of maintaining the laboratory.

If you are not familiar with the technology, very good description is available under the “User Education” topics.  With questions about this, as well as about potential applications please feel free to ask the laboratory staff. Let me point it out here that as expensive and top of the line our machines are, but what you cannot see under a fluorescent microscope, you won’t be able to measure with a Flow machine either.  The cytometers are very powerful, but they cannot make great data from a not-so-great sample.

If you are planning a Flow experiment contact us for a free consultation.  This will help you with designing an experiment that will properly answer your research questions.  We will also set up new user accounts on the machines as well as financial accounts.  Please print out and fill out a "Service Form" from the left side bar menu.  Then you would schedule a time on the machine to run either a pilot experiment (or more) if your experiment is complex or if it is simple and your antibodies well characterized for flow cytometry you may schedule time for running your experiment.  Read the Sample preparation guidelines about how to get ready for the experiment.  We can run the samples for you, or you can be trained to run them yourself.  The results are stored at the lab for only limited time, so bring a writable CD, a USB portable storage drive, or a Zip disk to save your data.

Before getting trained we ask you to work your way through the links under the "Canto Tutorials" and potentially the "FloJo Tutorials" tabs.  Unless you are quite knowledgeable on Flow Cytometry, chances are that it will take some time even after training before you’ll feel comfortable working alone.  No problem, we are available to help you with glitches.  There are also manuals and troubleshooting sheets to help you at the lab and on this website under the “User Education”

The charges accumulated by a lab are compiled monthly and forwarded to accounting as well as a summary to the PI.

For more information you can use the side bar menu, call at 396-9393, email at kszekere@health.usf.edu or come by the facility at its current location of MDC 4010