We purchased a Simon and have never been able to get reproducible results, even with multiple training events by the company. Further, they refuse to refund us our money, so we are extremely dissatisfied.

On that note, we are looking to sell ours if anyone has better luck with it.

Hello Armando,

I am also very interested in Simon and in fact was the first from Spain that contacted the company Protein Simple for more information about the technology.

Think about it as a Bioanalyzer, but mixed with immunodetection.

I believe that in the same way real-time PCR changed the way we do PCR, very soon most of the labs will use a Simon-like technology for Western blot!

If you need a direct contact, I can forward you their contact info.

Recently there was a technical paper that evaluates exhaustively that new technology and if you contact the Simon's people, I'm sure they will send you plenty of information.

As a preliminary info, it costs about about 60 000 euro and the cost per sample is about 5 euro.

BUT - you spend only 15 min to load the reagents and then... go for a swim, for an example. In 4 hours you have the results, already calculated.

BUT - you need only 2-3 micrograms of protein

BUT - you use much less antibody...

AND - more importantly - is highly reproducible!

Did your lab buy a simon?

Cheers.

We consider to buy the Simon (or the Sally) system but besides the huge appeal on throughput, the claims on reproducibility and the soundy savings on time, protein and antibody, we still have some regrets:

-Its a close system; capillars, CE matrix and even the "optimized" second antibody are proprietary

-ProteinSimple is a small company; will it survive bankrupcy, fusions, focus changes and keep Simon alive in the next five years?

-5 euro per sample is fine, but, as with Bioanalyser, could you rely on the availability of disposable and expensive replacement parts in a near future?

I don´t like to perform manual WB but proteinsimple at this time is not a solution for small budget labs.

Does anyone knows another WB alternative based on CE ?

Best wishes

Hi Petar!

Thanks a lot for your advice. I will be grateful if you send me contact information.

Best,

Armando

We purchased a Simon and have never been able to get reproducible results, even with multiple training events by the company. Further, they refuse to refund us our money, so we are extremely dissatisfied.

On that note, we are looking to sell ours if anyone has better luck with it.

Jamie, could you please attach some images with data demonstrating the lack of reproducibility ?

@ Jamie Johansen

Thanks for your input. I'm really sorry to hear about Simon. Our lab is thinking about getting one, but your experience makes me more hesitant. Any more information would be great.

Hello Jamie,

If possible, i too would appreciate more details regarding your experience, including a few sample photos.

I am contemplating buying the device but as Petar and Roberto pointed out, uninterrupted supply of consumables at reasonable prices and long-term survival of a small company are causes for concern.

I imagine that soon others may also introduce similar devices, assuming that fundamentally the system is capable of working reliably... which may be something to wait and see!

Regards,

Forgot to ask, how many pennies does the device set you back?  

Our system was a used one I believe, and we spend around 50K or more.  We were looking for a fairly abundant protein around 120 kDa, which should have been fine.  We spent time optimizing the runs, and finally thought we had the conditions correct.  (We were looking a known protein levels too.) But then we ran into issues where not all of the capillaries would work each time, so we could not reliably reproduce the data. And with each capillary being so expensive, there was no way we could afford to have a run that didn't produce data.  It also took so much time to load samples etc, it didn't save us very much time compared to traditional blots.  Also to note, we bought this as a core facility piece of equipment, shared among two departments.  At least five labs were unable to get usable results from the Simon, and went back to traditional blotting. No one has used it since.

Thank you, Jamie.

Anticipating the price, I was also thinking of getting a few more investigators involved but now I have to reevaluate...

The idea behind the device seemed attractive but it seems that it may need a few tweaks from the manufacturer.