The Cell Biology and Flow Cytometry Core Facility at the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research serves the research needs of more than 20 investigators. The overall mission of this core facility is to provide intensive training and instruction in the use of sterile techniques for culture-based studies. Such cultures serve to minimize the reliance of investigators on the use of large numbers of animals for their biomedical experiments. Hands-on training and monitoring ensures both the highest quality and most efficient use of the facility as a specialized, community-shared service facility. In addition, centralized core purchases of reagents and supplies reduce the cost of these materials for individual laboratories.

The technical service aspect of the core facility is organized into four main components. All of these rely on sophisticated instrumentation to maintain specific, individualized environmental conditions and ensure the safe handling of biohazardous materials.

First, the cell line laboratory is designed for handling research utilizing established, immortalized cell lines of human, rodent, and monkey origin that have specialized characteristics that help the researchers validate biochemical, morphological, or pharmacological hypotheses concerning reproductive system physiology. The core maintains an extensive cell line repository to serve the investigators' needs.

Second, in the primary culture laboratory, investigators establish short-term cultures of cells from reproductive tissues. These cells show characteristics closely resembling those of the intact state, and allow researchers to characterize and predict how these cells may behave in response to hormones, growth factors, drugs, or a new chemical compound in the whole animal. Ultimately, these cell-based studies are the initial steps in determining the usefulness and safety of new molecules prior to their preclinical testing in animals and, once safety is evaluated, before use in human Phase 1 studies.

The third section of the facility is the sterile media preparation laboratory. Specialized preparations of chemicals and nutrients for growing and maintaining cells are made here. In-house preparation ensures the highest level of quality control, the monitoring of each reagent for its shelf life and potency, and reduced costs to each user compared to commercial vendor purchases. In addition, this laboratory is equipped with an FDA-approved large-capacity steam autoclave to disinfect materials used by researchers for their cell culture–related work. Core laboratory personnel are available to give advice on cell culture techniques and specialized applications, to troubleshoot problems as they arise during users' work, and to maintain the high-quality environment of the entire core facility.

Flow cytometry is the fourth highly specialized service category provided by the core manager. Flow analyses and cell sorting are conducted for investigators' projects by the core manager or trained, experienced users using the facility's FACSCalibur (BD) fluorescence-activated cell sorter.