What is flow cytometry like in the clinical lab?
Hi all,
I am a med tech by trade but I have fairly extensive post-bac research experience doing flow cytometry. Given that my flow experience is exclusively research based- I'm curious about what flow cytometry labs are like when they are part of clinical testing and under CLIA/CAP requirements. I'd love to hear any stories, but a few specific questions that I have are:
How much are you able to set/ move gates? Is the gating hierarchy adjustable? Can you select which markers are displayed on the x and y axis?
Do you use any kind of LiveDead stain?
Do you typically gate on single cells?
How many events do you typically acquire per sample?
Do you use a mixture of both IVDs and LDTs?
Are you aware of the "CD8 escapee" phenomenon and is it something that comes up regularly in testing? (I had never heard of this in research but came across it on BDs website looking at clinical flow info)
What resources do you use to learn more about clinical flow?
Edit I thought of more!
Do you use any kind of Fc block?
Does your prep procedure include a wash step?
Thank you so much for your time and for satisfying my curiosity!