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Accelerating the pace of medical research by 10,000 cells a second

11 August 2014

We’re able to research different diseases at the same time thanks to the expertise of our senior scientists, and our technical prowess in Flow Cytometry, a technique that underpins all of our research.

Flow Cytometry is essential for all of our health research, whether we’re researching new treatments for cancer, asthma or allergies. It give us the ability to pick out and analyse in great detail the individual immune cell causing diseases from all the other normal immune cells that are doing their job. This analysis runs at lightning speeds of tens of thousands of cells per second.

This increases the pace of health research, and is so important that almost 90% of our researchers use Flow Cytometry to develop immune-based therapies for the treatment of diseases such as cancer, asthma and allergy, multiple sclerosis and arthritis.

Generous support from organisations like the Hugh Green Foundation has enabled the Malaghan Institute’s Flow Cytometers to become one of the most advanced platforms in Australasia, and the busiest flow cytometry suite in New Zealand.  Flow cytometers are unique because of the speed and sheer volume of information you can obtain from each cell.

This cutting edge technology needs highly skilled staff, and Kylie Price, our Cell Technology Suite Manager & Hugh Green Flow Cytometry Fellow, leads this vital team of specialists. The recent investment of the Hugh Green Foundation has been essential in growing Kylie’s expertise in Flow Cytometry, enabling Kylie to connect with and learn from the world’s experts in this exciting field of science.

 

This article features in the August 2014 issue of our Scope newsletter (Issue 54).  Download the full newsletter here - 506 KB (PDF)