Cell Sorter

• Subject Area: Medicine
• Term: Funded in 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517403582

We hereby apply for the procurement of a user-friendly cell sorter which, as a benchtop device, enables the easy sorting of a wide range of cell sizes for diverse applications. We are a cluster of young and innovative research groups that have basic funding from the University of Tübingen and have also been successful in obtaining funding from the European Research Council or the German Research Foundation. Virtually all of us have been abroad for extended periods of time (Feucht & Leibold at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Schürch at Stanford University, and Flatz at the National Institutes of Health). In addition to immunology, we are united by the fact that we accepted a position in Tübingen with the vision of decisively advancing our fields through basic and translational research. In doing so, as clinician-scientists, we repeatedly successfully take on the task of verifying our discoveries in basic research on human samples, thus bringing research closer to the needs of the clinic or the patient. From our daily clinical work, we know the current limitations of diagnostics and therapeutics. Since we all work to a large extent with human samples that are difficult to obtain, it is crucial that we have direct access day and night and on weekends to a cell sorting device that can be operated independently by our laboratory members. A short distance also ensures that the samples remain fresh so that they can be expanded as they progress and are available for further experiments. Therefore, an important criterion for the instrument is to automate setup, acquisition, sorting, and analysis as completely as possible so that sorting is easy to perform and thus independent of an operator. The system software should be intuitive and support sorting into tubes and 96- and 384-well plates. Raw sorting data should be available in FCS 3.0 and FCS 3.1 files so that they can be exported to third-party analysis tools. These specifications are met by the two devices described. Obtaining such a device will greatly speed up the collection of new data and improve collaboration among teams. Such equipment will help us to perform experiments on par with world-leading laboratories and consolidate the research location in Tübingen. This will also be crucial for recruiting more talented young researchers in the future.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Zellsortiersystem
• Instrumentation Group: 3500 Zellzähl- und Klassiergeräte (außer Blutanalyse), Koloniezähler
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Leader: Professor Dr. Lukas Flatz