Facilities and Resources

The VV physical infrastructure consists of a clean room, a quality control room, two tissue culture rooms and a main laboratory area, which is equipped to meet the requirements of currently offered services. These services include mainly cloning and production of lentiviral and AAV vectors and gene transfer studies. The VV is equipped with 5 biological safety cabinets (2 designated for BSL2+ work), 6 tissue cell incubators, 2 FPLC-systems, one ultracentrifuge, fluorescent microscopes with camera, and the full set of molecular biology and analytical equipment to meet a wide array of viral vector production and characterization needs.

Below is the list of some equipment and techniques available in our core facility:

Technologies

Equipment

  • Chromatography systems for the reliable purification of proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids (AKTA FPLC systems, Cytiva);

  • Ultracentrifuges (100,000 max rpm, 802,400 xg) (Optima XE, Beckamn Coulter);

  • Nanoparticle tracking analyzer (range: 10 nm - 2000 nm) (Nanosight, Malvern);

  • UV/Vis, Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and Static Light Scattering (SLS) analyzer (Stunner platform, Unchained labs);

  • Cell imaging and multi-mode reader, high content analyzer (Cell discoverer, Zeiss);

  • Electroporator and nucleofector system (Nucleofector technologies, Lonza);

  • Flow cytometry–based platform for multiplexing (100 tests in a single reaction volume) (Luminex 200, Luminex);

  • Pre-clinical in vivo imaging system (IVIS platform, PerkinElmer);

  • Electrophysiology plate reader (Maestro set up, Axion BioSystems);

  • Fluorescent microscopes (ZOE, BioRad; EVOS, Invitrogen/TFS ; Floid, TFS)

  • qPCR and ddPCR (BioRad systems);

  • Deep-freezers with CO2 backup system (Thermo, ThermoScientific),

  • Biological safety cabinets (Herasafe-Thermo, ThermoScientific) and tissue cell incubators (Heraeus-Thermo, ThermoScientific).