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October 2003 Working at the Cellular and Molecular Level A half dozen small, equipment-packed rooms form the “CellCore” of the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research (CBR) on the campus of The Rockefeller University. Shorthand for “Cell Biology and Flow Cytometry Core,” the CellCore provides technical services for CBR scientists, postdoctoral trainees, and research staff. Scientists from as far away as China, India, and Japan and as close as The Rockefeller University and Weill Medical College benefit through collaborations with Council scientists. Facility director Patricia L. Morris notes, “Our ultimate purpose is to foster and support high-quality research, and our challenge is to provide researchers intensive, hands-on training in the use of sterile techniques, and daily support services for cell culture-based studies.” The Council purchased a state-of-the-art cell sorter and added “flow cytometry” to the list of technical services the CellCore offers. Smaller than most major household appliances, the fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) employs multiple lasers to characterize cells based on their DNA, specific cell markers, and distinct biomolecules. For example, FACS sorting can select rare subpopulations of breast or dendritic immune cells, or sperm from millions of freshly isolated human cells. Cells can be sorted into enriched populations with the exact recognition molecules (receptors) needed for further analyses in a specific progestin experiment on breast or endometrial cells, or microbicide efficacy studies. CellCore researchers and trainees investigate issues ranging from reproductive health and dysfunction, immunology, and toxicology to preclinical drug evaluations using living cells. To demonstrate that a particular, predictable mechanism is at work, the rules of scientific research require that results be reproducible. In cell-based studies, this means using either carefully characterized cells that proliferate in a controlled manner (e.g., normal self-renewing cells such as skin) or an uncontrolled manner (e.g., prostate or breast cancer cells), or cells that do not divide once they are isolated from living tissue (e.g., sperm). All of these experimental models require the highest levels of sterile techniques and standardization of protocols. Strict anti-contamination procedures are used in CBR’s two room-HEPA-filtered CellCore culture laboratories, which are accessed through clean anterooms to eliminate ambient corridor contaminants. Powerful ceiling air filters in all rooms create a level of cleanliness equal to a surgical operating suite. In the “cell line” room, more than 300 lineages of immortalized cells, originally derived from various human and animal cancers and normal tissues, are protected from contaminants. Hundreds of vials of such immortalized cell lines are held in a repository, banked in suspended animation while frozen below –160°C until particular cells are needed for an investigator’s experiment. Thus a researcher can return years later and continue work using the same line of cells, ruling out any variations in results due to cellular aging or genetic drifts in characteristics of these cells over time. The second "primary culture" room is dedicated to experiments that isolate specialized cells from animal and human tissue biopsy materials. Morris notes, "Having this centralized, specialized Cell Biology and Flow Cytometry Core facility enables Council investigators to minimize the use of animals in their experiments, ensures highest-quality, sterile culture-related reagents and supplies for their cell-based molecular biology work, reduces weekly expenses for associated materials and support personnel, and facilitates ongoing and new projects with its extensive cell repository and state-of-the-art, managed quality control and instrumentation." See Also
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