Facilities

The Cancer Immunobiology Center is housed in more than 8,000-square-feet of space, including centralized core facilities, in the Simmons Biomedical Research Building on UT Southwestern Medical Center’s North Campus, offering researchers a productive and state-of-the-art environment in which to work.

Laboratories

Central laboratory facilities include:

• Tissue culture
• Prep room
• Washrooms
• Cold room and dark room
• Animal room
• Hot room and equipment rooms

The GMP and BSL-3 laboratories are also housed in the Center. A 110-square-foot room has been renovated for the fermenters, columns, and cold boxes to grow the E. coli, extract the recombinant protein, carry out the first purification step, and remove endotoxin. Ricin aerosol and intranasal administration take place in our BSL3 lab. We also have our own mass spectrometer and peptide synthesizer for our vaccine studies.

Major Equipment

• FACS Vintage
• FACScan and FACStar Plus
• Mass spectrometer
• Peptide synthesizer

BIAcore and microscopes equipped for five-color immunophenotyping and multicolor FISH are located in a Central Flow Cytometry Facility (see below). There are rooms for large equipment items, including ultracentrifuges, ultra-cold freezers, tissue culture hoods, and darkroom facilities.

Flow Cytometry Core Facility

The flow cytometry multi-user core facility has both North and South Campus locations. The facility is equipped with two FACScans, three FACSCaliburs, a CyAn, and a LSR II for user operated data acquisition.

Users are trained to run the benchtop analyzers, and billing is calculated in half-hour increments.

• FACScan – single laser instrument, 488nm, capable of three fluorescent colors
• FACSCalibur – dual laser instrument with lasers at 488nm and 635nm, capable of four fluorescent colors *
• CyAn – a three laser, nine color instrument, with lasers at 488nm, 405nm, and 635nm
• LSR II – a four laser, 16 color instrument, with lasers at 488nm, 532nm, 405nm, and 635nm laser *

* The Calibur and LSRII on the North Campus are both equipped with a HTS, high throughput system, to acquire sample directly from a 96 or 384 well plate.

There are five cell sorters available for use in the facility:

• MoFlo – three laser, nine color, high speed sorter with lasers at 488nm, 633nm, and 360nm
• Aria – a five laser, 18 color, high speed sorter with lasers at 488nm, 532nm, 405nm, 635nm
• AutoMacs – automated benchtop magnetic cell sorter.

The MoFlo, and three Arias are operated by facility staff only. The AutoMacs is user operated.

Training is mandatory for access to the benchtop analyzers. Training is $75 and should be scheduled when an experiment is available.

Computers and multiple software packages are available for data analysis free of charge to users.

Computers

Central computer facilities are available on campus, and terminals are present in all laboratories and offices.