A quick word about costs
Our new animation, with a voice over by PP Patron Les Spaine is available to view on our website, it is aimed at black men, a group twice as likely to develop prostate cancer. The Vectra Polaris was purchased by the Prostate Project, it is a substantial piece of technology that came with a rather hefty price-tag in the region of £270,000. The Vectra is an Automated Quantitative Pathology Imaging System that can quickly detect and measure up to 9 overlapping biomarkers within a single tissue section. This state of the art technology provides in-depth analysis of interactions between immune and cancerous cells, something that was previously impossible and it was worth every single penny! There is a line in the film Jurassic Park, a scientist shouts at a young child, telling him to put a piece of equipment down saying ‘it looks heavy, and heavy means expensive’. I’m not a huge fan of the film (the last in the series was awful) but I can sort of see what the scientist means, but in the world of real science, it’s not just the heavy stuff that is expensive.
Less spectacular, is the reagents pen, shown here in the hands of Sunny, the technician that runs the Vectra Polaris. This incredible device provides a thin film-like green-tinged hydrophobic barrier when a circle is drawn around a specimen on a slide and it costs £75.00. And when we are looking at the ‘Man Van’, just about every piece of equipment has to be robust enough for work in the field, everything from laptops and testing equipment to chairs and tables…not forgetting the loo! Heavy might always mean expensive in science fiction, but in real science, sometimes the light things cost a bob or two as well.
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