Accuri Announces Sale of 500th C6 Flow Cytometer(R) System and Award of two Free Units for Innovative Flow Cytometry Applications

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Accuri Cytometers Inc., a life sciences company manufacturing and marketing revolutionary bench-top flow cytometer systems, today announced the sale of the 500th unit of its Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer® System and the 2010 recipients of its Accuri Cytometers Creativity Awards program, which provides a free Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer to researchers in the U.S. and Europe who design highly innovative uses of flow cytometry.  Explicitly designed for routine use by biomedical researchers in their own labs, Accuri's flow cytometer is a full-featured bench-top cell analysis system that provides powerful capabilities similar to industry-leading flow cytometers in a user-friendly format and at a fraction of the cost.  

The 2010 Accuri Flow Cytometer Creativity Award winners include research teams at Iowa State University's Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center's Department of Hematology in the Netherlands.  Accuri's Creativity Award program is designed to foster innovative research that taps the unrealized potential of flow cytometry and expands its use to novel applications.  

Jeffrey Williams, Accuri President and CEO, commented: "I want to congratulate the two talented research groups who have been selected as recipients of the Accuri Cytometers 2010 Creativity Award and the entire worldwide Accuri team for achieving this major sales milestone just two years after the launch of the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System.  The Accuri C6 continues to receive outstanding acceptance in the marketplace, as a rapidly expanding number of scientists worldwide discover the benefits of round-the-clock access to high performance flow cytometry.  We look forward to reporting on further innovative uses as our growing customer base applies the power and versatility of the Accuri C6 to both traditional and novel applications."

Accuri designed the C6 system from the ground up with input from hundreds of researchers.  Accuri's innovations, coupled with its state-of-the-art components, resulted in a cytometer that is powerful, robust, compact, easy-to-use and very affordable, at less than one-third the price of other market-leading flow cytometers and one-tenth the operating costs of the market leaders over five years of ownership.

"Our newest Accuri Cytometer Creativity Award winners will soon discover for themselves the mix of performance, versatility and ease-of-use that have made the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System such a success in just two years on the market in the U.S., with more recent launches in Europe and Asia," noted Jack Ball, Chief Commercial Officer at Accuri.  "The rapid sale of more than 500 units worldwide is testament to the outstanding performance and value delivered by the C6, the unmet demand from scientists for greater access to high quality flow cytometry and the talent and dedication of the Accuri sales and support team, who have hosted on-site demonstrations for hundreds of scientists.  In these demonstrations we proved that along with its lower price and smaller footprint, the Accuri C6 produces equivalent data to that of the market leaders.  It is also so easy to use that most scientists at the demonstration were running their own samples and analyzing data after just a few minutes--an amazing result in a field previously known for its complexity.  As we continue to ramp up our global presence, we have great expectations for what one of our many satisfied customers calls our 'little cytometer that could'."

The rapid acceptance of the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer in the marketplace reflects user experiences such as those reported by Steve McClellan, senior biological scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR), Flow Cytometry Core Laboratory of the University of Florida, who commented, "The Accuri C6 is a transformative product, providing high performance flow cytometry in an affordable, easy-to-use format that makes it accessible to almost all researchers.  And the story gets even better. In recent toxicity studies that relied on the system's uniquely wide dynamic range, our lab was able to conduct experiments that previously had not been successful using a traditional cytometer available in our core facility. Affordable and accessible, and with improved capabilities too!"      

2010 Accuri Flow Cytometer Creativity Awards          

Accuri Flow Cytometer Creativity Award winner Dr. Byron Brehm-Stecher of the Rapid Microbial Detection and Control Laboratory in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University will use the C6 Flow Cytometer System to develop cytometry-based assays for detection of foodborne pathogens, such as Salmonella.  

Dr. Brehm-Stecher noted, "The continued safety of our food supply is rightly the subject of growing concern among food producers, regulators and consumers.  The Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System is a potentially game-changing instrument for food safety monitoring.  The C6 system has a bench-top footprint, is more affordable that other research grade cytometers and does not require special training or infrastructure to operate or maintain.  While these attributes make the Accuri C6 attractive to academic labs, they also make it possible for food companies and regulatory agencies to use flow cytometry in the field for rapid food screening for bacterial pathogens.  We are delighted to receive our Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System and look forward to reporting on our efforts to apply it to food pathogen monitoring."

Accuri Flow Cytometer Creativity Award European winner Dr. Waander van Heerde and colleagues at the Department of Hematology at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, will use their C6 system to determine whether flow cytometry can aid in the often-difficult classification of blood platelet disorders in combination with SELDI-TOF MS (surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry).  

Dr. van Heerde noted, "We believe the Accuri C6 system can provide data that will have a significant impact on the diagnosis and classification of hereditary platelet function defects, leading to a better diagnosis of this heterogeneous group of disorders.  Currently, these defects are difficult to classify, mainly due to the absence of sensitive and specific assays for these small anucleated cells.  We believe the accurate and precise detection of the physiological characteristics of cells made possible with the C6 system coupled with SELDI-TOF MS could provide important insights into the classification of various blood platelet disorders."

To learn more about the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System, visit Accuri's booths and attend their workshops and tutorials at CYTO 2010 and IMMUNOLOGY 2010™.

• CYTO 2010 – May 8–12, 2010, Washington State Convention and Trade Center, Seattle, WA Booths 113, 115, 212, 214
• IMMUNOLOGY 2010 – May 7–11, 2010, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD  Booths 405, 407, 504, 506

About Accuri Cytometers

Accuri Cytometers, Inc. is a life sciences company developing and marketing revolutionary high performance cell analysis systems designed to bring the power of flow cytometry into the labs of life science researchers everywhere.  Reflecting the input of hundreds of researchers, the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System is a full-featured bench-top cell and bead analysis system that provides similar capabilities to those of industry-leading flow cytometers in an easy-to-use format and at a fraction of their cost.  The Accuri system was engineered from the start to be compact, powerful and user-friendly, while also being affordable by most research laboratories.  The Accuri CSampler® adds simple, reliable and user-friendly automation to the Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer System.  For more information, please visit www.accuricytometers.com.

SOURCE Accuri Cytometers, Inc.