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What is the best way to filter my cells?
 
No matter how clean a sample preparation is, there will inevitably be a degree of cell clumping which has the potential of causing blockages in the fluidics of the flow cytometers. At best a blockage (or even a partial blockage) will cause distortions in your data, at worst it will require half an hour to clear and re-calibrate the machine, which may mean you run out of time before finishing your assay.

For this reason we require that you filter all of your samples immediately prior to being run on FlowCore equipment. If you still have problems with cell clumping after filtering, refer to this FAQ.

BD manufacture a range of cell filtering products you can use for this purpose:
 
Product Pros Cons BD Catalogue #
5ml polystyrene round-bottom tubes with a cell strainer cap (35um, sterile) - Can filter sample directly into FACS tube and then immediately run - Available for polystyrene ("hard") tubes only, must transfer strainer cap to "soft" polypropylene tube if running samples on either Influx sorter
- Only available at 35um pore size
- Only practical for samples up to approx. 3ml		 352235
Nylon mesh cell strainer - Fits into 50ml centrifuge tube
- Useful for large sample volumes
- Good for filtering cells in bulk at beginning of experiment
- Available in a range of pore sizes		 - Not recommended for small sample volumes 40um: 352340

70um: 352350

100um: 352360
 
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