Category: Facilities

The UK Medical Bioinformatics partnership programme (UK Med-Bio)

What is Med-Bio?

The UK MEDical BIOinformatics partnership programme (UK Med-Bio), led by Prof Paul Elliott and funded by the MRC, brings together a group of leading multidisciplinary teams in medical, chemical, metabolic, statistical and computational sciences from across Imperial College London (lead institution) and its partners.

What resources it offers

As part of the programme, dedicated infrastructure has been purchased and set up, consisting of hardware that is already integrated in HPC’s CX1 and AX4 clusters, dedicated servers with virtual machines (VMs) and a massive amount of high-performance, secure, tiered storage directly connected to such servers. (more…)

State of the art imaging centre opens at Hammersmith Campus

In 2015 the Department of Medicine launched the new Biological Imaging Centre (BIC) at the Hammersmith Campus. The centre is dedicated to high-quality imaging research in preclinical models of disease using PET/CT, MRI and optical imaging. Our goal is to translate discoveries from the bench, efficiently and confidently, to realise their potential to improve health.

BICThe centre houses a top of the range Bruker BioSpec 9.4T MRI system which allows high resolution in vivo imaging of all murine models of disease and therapy, from diffusion tensor imaging of brain connectivity, measures of tumour burden, through to live assessment of cardiac function and viability.

The Inveon system is a versatile platform allowing Computed Tomography (CT), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) studies to be carried out on a single integrated gantry.

In addition to our MRI and PET/CT capabilities we also provide two optical imaging systems. Fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) is a novel tomographic near-infrared (NIR) imaging modality that enables 3D quantitative determination of fluorochrome distribution in tissues at any depth. The PerkinElmer IVIS Lumina XR III on the other hand provides an expandable, sensitive bench-top imaging system that is easy to use for both fluorescent and bioluminescent imaging in vivo.

Led by Dr Lan Zhao, with a dedicated team of staff, the centre provides access to and support for scientists from across Imperial College to conduct research in a broad range of preclinical areas. If you are interested in preclinical imaging and would like to discuss potential projects please contact us at icbic@imperial.ac.uk.

Further information about all of our modalities can be found on the Biological Imaging Centre website.

Sam O’Connell
Divisional Operations Assistant
Divisions of Experimental Medicine and Brain Sciences

Services available at the St. Mary’s FACS Core Facility

St. Mary’s FACS core facility Who we are and what we can do for you:

The St. Mary’s FACS Core Facility is housed on the 3rd floor in the Medical School building. The facility is open to everyone and provides access to high-end FACS analysers, teaching and training, performs a dedicated Cat2 cell sorting service, and houses a MSD and a Luminex200 cytokine and protein analysis platform.

The cell sorting service usually operates during weekdays but we try to accommodate a certain flexibility in terms of start and end time. Your science matters to us and we’ll live up to this claim. Access to all of our analyser platforms can be organised on a 24/7 basis with college security.

As part of our service, the facility provides all necessary reagents (except antibodies and functional dyes) and consumables required to run your samples on perfectly maintained instruments.

Services:

Training is performed in the facility on our own analysers to enable users to operate the systems independently with high confidence. Training is free and we only charge the hourly cost rate of the analyser.

We help you with Panel design using our experience in colour choices in order to get you on track faster and economically more efficient.

Seminars on FACS analysis and sorting can be requested for small groups or departments.

CAT2 Cell sorting is performed in our facility as a full service using our AriaIIIu sorter housed in a CAT2 hood; usually Monday-Friday, but we try to be accommodating if out-of-hours/weekends are necessary.

We offer help on experimental design and data interpretation in order to help you reach your research goals more effectively.

Available cytometers: £25/h recharge

LSRII: 405/488/633nm excitation suite coupled with 6/6/3 detector emission bench

Fortessa A: 355/405/488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 2/6/6/4/3 detector emission bench

Fortessa B: 405/488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 6/6/4/3 detector emission bench

FlowJo: We provide access to FlowJo on a Mac and a PC for everybody using our cytometers for free as part of general facility usage

Cell sorter: £67/h recharge

AriaIIIu in a Cat2 safety hood: 375 or 405/ 488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 2or6/2/4/3 detector emission bench. Sorting onto slides, dishes, multi-well plates (max 384well), Eppendorfs, FACS and Falcon tubes. Nozzles sizes 70, 85, and 100um to enable all kind of cell sorts.

Cytokine and Protein analysis platforms: £30/plate recharge

Meso Scale Discovery MSD platform

Biorad Luminex200 analyse

Find out more at: www1.imperial.ac.uk/nhli/respiratory/respinfect/flow


Dr. Malte Paulsen
Head of the Flow Cytometry Core Facility, St. Mary’s Campus
Faculty of Medicine