About a year ago I had never heard the term Flow Cytometry, and I still cant say that I know a lot about it. But I do know that it applies to research in fields like molecular biology, pathology and immunology and so is used in places like cancer and AIDS research. CFlow, the application I worked on when I was at Menlo Innovations and the first client project we had at Arb Design was launched this Friday, which for us is really exiting. This is the first large scale product I have worked on and it is great to see what it has become.

Accuri Cytometers is the company behind the cytometer, they built the hardware and used Menlo to build the software. What I find really cool is that this product will most likely change the accessibility of cell analysis. Based on some new ideas for the hardware implementation, Accuri can build cytometers at 1/5 of the competitors price. And with the use of Menlos High Tech Anthropology the user interface is a lot more intuitive than that of the competitors. Having a system that is cheap and easy to use will mean that students will have easier access to this tool during education and hospitals in developing countries could be able to afford a unit.

In Denmark I ran into the application of flow cytometry when I visited Dansire, another of our clients. They use it to do sex selection of sperm cells for cattle breading – an interesting concept which is possible because sperm cells with the X-chromosome contains 4% more DNA and reflects laser light from the cytometer differently (article in Danish).