Cathy, when you say "research applications" are you screening antibodies? Or
do you just want to be able to use your own reagents and tweak procedures? I
use the Shandon Sequenza and Cadenza. The main reason I chose them was for
screening monoclonal antibodies (same slide sample numerous different
antibodies) where sometimes all I receive is 80ul of primary and I use whole
frozen embryonic mouse sections to screen on. (is that throwing some
specialized parameters in or what?) The R&D and other techs at Shandon have
been extremely helpful the couple of times I called. One of the biggest
benefits I have found is primaries that I use to use neat I can dilute
500-1000. (don't ask me the science behind why, I can't figure it out) Great
savings for us since they are in house and limited in supply. I  use any
vendor's reagents because a reagent contract is not part of  the system.
Since the system works by gravity displacement I don't have the problem I
had with capillary systems. (sometimes a lot had to be used to cover the
entire sample). One feature that I was concerned about was the 20 slide
limit on the Cadenza but I set up 40 and run them consecutively.  I don't
know how much all of the machines cost now but, I could have purchased 2
Cadenzas for the price of one of the other 3 that I tried.  anita