Does anyone use Quotient Reagents for Blood Bank?  Any problems?  Pricing on antigen screening reagent looks good.  If you change antigen screening reagent vendors what/how much validation would you do?

I use their QC kit for tube testing and will be adding complement control cells. In the case of the QC kit, I did parallel testing for a 2 weeks and compared results with the kit/process I was already using. Everything looked great. Complement Control Cells from Quotient are good for 4 weeks, instead of 2 weeks, so I'll be checking them in parallel against two lots of my current CCCs to make sure that they will react reliably at the end of their outdate.

I've also got some of their anti-Fyb monoclonal, which looked very good when I played with it. I'll run that in parallel with my current antisera on at least 25 specimens, including some known antigen positive and negative cells from an ID panel.

 

We use 3 cell screen, 4 cell screen, IgG check cells and A1 and B cells for tube tests, plus a few of the monoclonal antisera.  Only negative comment I have received from staff  is that the IgG check cells tend to be weaker than Immucor, more like 2-3+ rather than 3-4+.  Saved a lot of money making this switch, and we are looking at changing a few more reagents in 2019.  

We have used their C3 coated cells for quite a while with no problems at all. 

 

We use their A1 cells, B cells, Check cells (and yes they are a little weaker), Anti-A, B, D, AB and a few rare antisera.  

We have used Quotient reagents since 2012 without any problems until they began providing poly AHG. In our lab we found poly AHG to be much more weakly reactive, particularly with their C3 check cells. That to the point of having to do the 5 min room temp incubation to get above 1+; the immediate spins were 1+ at the very best. One other reagent we did not like was their anti-D because of their inability to remove a cold reactive antibody that conceivably might cause false positives.

The balance of the reagents that we use are ABO antisera and backtype cells, 3 cell screening cells, C3 and IgG check cells, and finally the QC kit.

We use the following reagents from Quotient:

complement control cells;  A1 ,A2, and B cells; Antisera for Fya, M, N, Lea, and Leb; and their 16 cell panel

The only issue I've had with them is a recall of Anti-N last year that left it backordered for ~4 months. Their complement control cells seem to produce stronger reactions than Immucor's in my experience.