Welcome

Welcome to the Crick Flow Blog.

Today sees the official launch of the Francis Crick Institute and with it, the formation of the Crick Flow Cytometry Facility.

The existing flow cytometry / FACS labs at the former Cancer Research UK, London Research Institute (LRI) and the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) will be joining forces to become the biggest (and we hope best) flow cytometry core facility in Europe.

Staff currently based at the LRI.
Left to Right- Derek (lab head), Joana, Kirsty, Sukhveer, Marwa and Debi. Also (not in the picture) Carl.

For the next few months we will be operating across both existing locations but our current users should only notice a  couple of changes: Firstly, we will be moving over to a new booking system which should go live very soon and secondly everyone will be seeing some new faces as the staff begin to work at both sites.

We've already begun to take delivery of some exciting new equipment including two twenty parameter Fortessa X20's and a custom built Fortessa X30, the first of its kind in the UK. More on those very soon...

   Inside the new Fortessa x30 at the NIMR site

The new X20 at our LRI site - just coming out of the wrappers

We are scheduled to start physically moving into our new lab in December of this year. We will go in three phases, the last of which is scheduled for May 2016.  We got a sneak peek at our new space earlier in the month, it's all coming together really well and our rooms have been carefully situated close to most of the labs the will use us the most.


Today also sees the launch of this blog, along with our twitter account and YouTube channel, boldly taking the flow cytometry core facility into the world of social media. Our plan is that these will keep the flow cytometry world, as well as our users, up to date as we embark on the exciting challenge of bringing two well established labs together and starting a new era with the Francis Crick Institute.

Make sure you also subscribe to our Twitter feed for updates on the lab and our YouTube Channel for some handy how to videos, we'll be adding more to that and this blog in the coming months.



Kirsty