Hi Jay,
Our core has been conjugating antibodies as a service since 2012 and are currently consuming approximately 400 maxpar X8 reactions per year. The largest advantage of in-house is the turn around time and cost. The disadvantage is that it can take the better part of the day, especially when conjugating multiple antibodies. Also, if your inventory is not large enough you may not have all the necessary metal options in stock.
Each 40 reaction kit comes with a choice of 10 metals, so to fill out a full panel you would need at least 4 kits. My recommendation would be to go the in-house route if you’re anticipating demand for at least 3-4 x 40 reactions kits per year, otherwise I would recommend outsourcing.
FLDM offers a conjugation service:
https://www.fluidigm.com/singlearticles ... on-service - Keep an eye out for the new Cadmium metals with MCP9 polymer later this year.
Ion Path offers conjugation kits which I believe use the same maleimide-sulfhydryl cross-linking chemistry as the X8:
https://www.ionpath.com/antibody-conjugation-kit/Expedon may be offering metal chelating polymer conjugation kits later this year that cross-links through primary amines:
https://www.expedeon.com/Regards,
-Greg Chang