Site Search     
 
bullet Back to BIIR Home
   
Core Facilities
Core facilities are essential to the development of a research institute dedicated to the translation of discoveries into patient treatment. At present, BIIR scientists rely on eight cores to support their research:

 
Cell & Tissue Procurement Core This core is under the direction of Dr. Palucka and core lab manager Lynnette Walters, who has 15+ years of research & clinical laboratory experience. This core receives patient blood samples, which are processed, phenotyped and frozen. The samples are blinded using accession numbers and entered into a database. The core also processes volunteer and patient apheresis, generating WBC specific fractions. These fractions can be used in research experiments or vaccine production. Tissue samples, such as melanoma samples are also received in this core and cultured to establish cell lines for research.

Flow Cytometry Core. Under the direction of Holden Maecker, PhD, the facility is managed by a Senior Research Associate, Elizabeth Kowalski, with over twenty years of experience in Flow Cytometry. She is helped by a research assistant with ten years of experience in the field. The facility includes:

One FACS Vantage™ with turbo sort and three lasers
Two FACS Calibur™ with two lasers
Two FACS Canto II™ with three lasers
Two FACS ARIA™: one with three lasers and eleven parameters, and the other with four lasers and thirteen parameters
One FACS Array™
One FACS LSR2™ with four lasers, eighteen color analyzer

GMP Cell Core. Dr. Palucka directs this facility, which is managed by Susan Burkeholder, a senior technician with over twenty years of cell culture experience and six years of GMP manufacturing. The DC vaccine product are manufactured in a dedicated GMP facility that was recently constructed within pre-existing space located on the first floor of the BIIR building. Materials used to construct the Room #105 GMP Facility were selected to provide smooth surfaces, corrosion resistance, and of a quality to facilitate sanitization. Only authorized personnel have access into the GMP Facility through doors controlled by electronic badge readers.

Imaging Core. Directed by Dr. Jacques Banchereau, the facility is managed by a senior research assistant, Sandra Clayton, with twenty five years of experience in microscopy. The facility includes:

One LEICA SP-1 confocal microscope
Two digital imaging systems composed of one upright and one inverted Olympus epi-fluorescent microscopes with Metamorph software and Roper Coolsnap cameras
A Nikon Perfect Focus system (on order) for analysis of whole mouse sections as pioneered by Dr. M. Jenkins
One Leica CM 3600 whole animal cryostat with Cryo-Jane tape transfer system
One Leica CM3050S cyrostat
One Olympus BX60 with Nikon DXM1200C color digital camera system
One post-imaging analysis workstation equipped with the Meta-morph software for image deconvolution and 3D rendering
One Xenogen IVIS, luciferase-based equipment that allows live-animal imaging
One CTL Immunospot ELISPOT Reader
One Leica SP-5 confocal (on order)

Immunomonitoring Core. Dr. Hideki Ueno directs this core facility, which performs flow cytometry, ELISA, ELISPOT, CTL assays and EPIMAX. Developed at BIIR, EPIMAX is a non-destructive assay that is used to measure immune responses:

across HLA haplotypes.
towards many antigens, allowing the analysis of a broad melanoma-specific repertoire.
by multiplex analysis of secreted cytokines, allowing the identification of the type of induced specific immunity.
and allows assessment of specific proliferation, thus addressing the quality of elicited T cells.
Molecular Biology Core. This facility is under the direction of Sandy Zurawski and includes:

One ABI 7700 Real-Time PCR
One Affymetryx Suite which includes an Agilent Analyzer, a complete Affymetryx station and a LIMS system utilizing an Oracle database
One robotic Illumina Bead Station

Monoclonal Antibody Core. Under the direction of Dr. Gerard Zurawski, this core includes a manager and three research assistants. Currently, the core is preparing mouse monoclonal antibodies to human interferon-alpha as a potential treatment of SLE. A program is being initiated to generate a large panel of monoclonal antibodies specific to human DC subsets. It is also being used to develop the CD-40 system to generate human monoclonal antibodies.

Multiplex Luminex® Core