Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2022
Organization: Institut de Cancérologie Strasbourg Europe
Impressing machine
Application Area: Colony counting
"The use of Gelcount is very time-saving, user friendly and easy to learn how to use it. The service after purchasing is quite impressive, they devote many hours to solve my issues and found that really great."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: CRUK
Our system of choice for medium throughput colony counting and spheroid growth.
Application Area:Colony counting and spheroid growth
"The software is easy enough to use, although it is sometimes a bit more tricky to fine tune the settings. The data is exported in XL but also as a picture of the plate, which is good as sometimes a picture is very striking. Reproducibility is very good, and once parameters have been set up for a cell line and an assay, it saves time and is not dependent on user for colony counting. It is a bit annoying to have to send the machine back to the manufacturer for annual servicing, and not have an engineer come on site, but we get the machine back quickly."
Manufacturer's ResponseWe are grateful for Dr. Trivier's constructive feedback. While the scale of our operations indeed do not presently allow us to offer on-site preventative maintenance servicing the recommended servicing/recalibration interval for GelCount is every 2 years. By offering free packaging and pre-completed transport documentation as well as a rapid turn-around service we endeavour at all times to minimize the inconvenience that is associated with 'return-to-base' instrument servicing.
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: University Cote d'Azur
Quicker and more accurate analysis of colony assays.
Application Area:Mammalian colony counter
"The GelCount is fantastic! We can now scan and count piles of plates in a few hours instead of days. It is very easy to use, reproducible; and the technical support is very responsive. A must-have for anyone doing a lot of colony assays."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Really great product!
Application Area:Radiation biology
"GelCount is really easy to use and the software is very user-friendly, it has saved me a lot of time on colony counting."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ
This instrument is terrific
Application Area:Colony counting
"Results are amazing and reproducible. We really love it in our lab in the US. I would love to have Oxford come and give an in house tutorial for all our people."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: MRC
Saves a substantial amount of time & reduces plastic TC plate usage by 75%!
Application Area:Analyze genotoxins in mutant cell lines
"We used the GelCount to change our colony survival assays from a 6-well to a 24-well format. When we were getting this method set up, we got great support from the company to optimize the settings of the instrument. This new method has been highly reproducible and saves culture media, time, and plastic."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2019
Organization: University of Houston
Great results. Very user friendly.
Application Area:Mammosphere assay
"This is a great instrument. The software is very easy to operate and the technical support is always ready to help. It saves a lot of time."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: MSKCC, NY
Good and can be easier to navigate
Application Area:Cout number of colonies in soft agar plates
"The equipment is good enough for analyzing the number of colonies, giving the colony count pretty quickly. It would be better if the ease of saving the images with and without colony counts is better."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: Sahlgrenska Cancer Center
This instrument has saved me countless hours.
Application Area:Sphere culture counting of floating colonies
"The gel count is a wonderful addition to our lab, due to its ease of use, simple set up and consistent behaviour we have increased our flow rate by a factor of ten. Previously we manually counted colonies which was time and cost prohibitive, now we can plan and execute much larger experiments and gain much more consistent results than before. I would highly recommend."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: Wayne State University
Makes my life easier
Application Area:Quantify surviving fractions after PhotoDynamic Therapy
"This product has many ingenious features that makes counting colonies easy and reduces operator error among replicates. Colonies can be defined by many parameters such as diameter, shape, and contrast (density). It is even possible to count without prior staining."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Efficiency, confidence and good-value system!
Application Area:Drug screening using clonogenic assay
"The instrument increases efficiency by reducing the time needed to count colonies. The picture of the plate and markup of each colony provides confidence on the counts. Data exporting into table format avoids any mistake during transfer of data. Pricing for the the system is just right for the advantages of the system. Technically, marking each colony with various characteristics provides tools to decide with confidence on the correct colony to count."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: Erasmus MC
Simple, unbiased and fast colony counting makes peoples want to use this machine.
Application Area:Colony survival assay on adherent mammalian cell lines
"The product is very easy to use and very important for our unbiased quantification of the number of colonies. The tray loading is sometimes a difficult process, since the tray can flip out of its position when inserting or when scanned. The Gelcount program should be updated more often, since the oldest version is still the best, but can be improved significantly. The new updates do not improve the program unfortunately. The price for maintenance is to high unfortunately. Only 10cm dishes from Thermo Scientific can be used in this machine. The height is essential since the other brands are too high unfortunately. Most dishes are 20 mm in height, but 15 mm is optimal since they will not move when scanned in the machine. "
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Live Tumor Culture Core Facility
Easy to use and high-throughput make it a critical equipment to our lab
Application Area:Calculate colony formation in soft agar to measure tumorigenicity
"The set-up and use of the equipment is very simple. Operation and optimization of data collection is clearly explained in the manual. Increased efficiency and reduced bias of manual counting makes this a critical piece of equipment for our lab as our primary focus is on the development of new tumor cell lines from multiple tissues for the use by researchers primarily focused on new drug discover for cancer."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute
A great instrument for colony counting and imaging spheroids
Application Area:Colony counting
"This instrument is great - it gives really nice pictures and the analysis software is really easy to use; being wizard-based really helps. We especially like the fact that the GelCount can scan samples in soft agar which is essential for some of our experiments. The software makes for the easy counting and sizing of colonies which has saved our researchers a lot of time. The company are great to work with and offer fantastic after care service. They are always happy to listen to improvements in the software which helps us as users. Would highly recommend."
Status:
ReviewerMember since: 2017
Organization: Trinity College Dublin
Every cell biology lab should have a GelCount
Application Area:Cancer research - radiobiology and cytotoxics studies (clonogenics), 3D cell spheroid analysis
"As a translational cancer biologist and radiobiologist, having previously used a ColCount device (predecessor to the GelCount) heavily in my postdoctoral research, when I started my own group in the UK in 2012 I purchased a GelCount. Of all the pieces of equipment I bought this was by far the most useful and heavily used in the group and larger Department/School. I would recommend this as a 'must buy' for anyone doing research on radiation, chemotherapeutics, novel targeted therapies, or 3D culture/spheroid analysis or stem cell-related work, who wants to employ a user-unbiased analysis. The GelCount is far superior to the previous ColCount model, and is highly reliable. The device is easy to use and it's easy to train others. The CHARM algorithm for colony analysis is very accurate, and once optimized (which is straightforward) allows for high-throughput plate analysis, and multiple algorithms can be saved and applied to different experimental set ups as necessary. The image resolution is outstanding, and the data metrics that are returned allow us to get far more out of our data that any other device we've tried - for example we get colony number (as expected), as well as colony/spheroid density, diameter, size distributions, among others. The imaging software can also differentiate debris and non-colony material, as well as differentiate doublets (colonies that have overlapped). All of this can be done in a range of plates (typically we've used 6-well and 96-wells plates and petri dishes. All of the data is exported to MS Excel is a user-friendly format, so users can take the data away and analyse it further. While we have never had any functional issues with the device, outside of routine maintenance I have found Oxford Optronix extremely helpful in voluntarily contacting me directly to aid in updating and installing software improvements and new features - which most other suppliers simply do not do. Having recently moved lab (2016) I left behind the GelCount, as the users from other groups would not part with it - indeed some of my graduates have now introduced GelCounts into their laboratories as core, essential kit. I recently once again purchased a GelCount for my new lab, as this piece of kit is frankly great value for money and is essential to any serious cancer research lab."
An all-in-one imaging and software platform for the detection, counting and processing of tumour colonies, spheroids and organoids in cancer biology. GelCount™ is conceived to rapidly and accurately detect colonies in 2D, 3D, spheroid, organoid and suspension assays.
Key Features: