About 

Data-physics OCA-20 contact angle analyser

The high incidence of infections caused by the use of implanted biomedical devices, including catheters, bone fracture fixation pins and heart valves etc. has a severe impact on human health and health care costs with increased morbidity and mortality.

This facility is to allow you to develop and evaluate new biomaterials and coatings with anti-bacterial properties and to design and evaluate new anti-infective biomedical devices and implants. 

Equipment and facilities

• Advanced coating systems
• Dataphysics OCA-20 contact angle analyser
• QCMD 300 quartz crystal microbalance
• Fluorescence microscopes
• Cell culture and bacterial adhesion test rigs
• Incubators
• Autoclave
• Flow chambers and urine flow systems;
• Dipping device for biofilm adhesion strength assays
• CorrTest Electrochemistry Workstation 
• UV-spectrometer
• Fume cabinet
• Biological safety cabinet 

About

The laboratory provides the equipment needed to accommodate sterile handling, incubation, sterilisation, storage and waste disposal. 

Equipment and facilities

• Biohazard laminar flow hood
• 2x Co2 incubators
• Autoclave
• Vacuum aspiration system
• Bench centrifuge
• Automated and manual cell counting facilities (Chemometec NucleoCounter® NC-250™ and haemocytometers)
• 10L water bath
• Portable UV light
• Inverted microscope
• Distilled water, Ethanol, Virkon and other cleaning products
• Biohazard waste bins and sharps bins
• pH meter
• 1-1000µl pipettes, automatic Pipette filler and serological pipettes (5-25ml)
• Culture dishes (35mm, 100mm & 150mm), T25 & T75 Culture flasks
• Refrigerator, freezers (-4oC, -20 oC and -70 oC), as well as a liquid nitrogen dewar
• Bio-rad Western Blotting System

About

The IncuCyte® Live-Cell Analysis System enables real-time, quantitative live-cell assays within a tissue culture incubator. The walk-away automation also allows you to gather more information in a faster or more efficient way. An IncuCyte S3 and a new IncuCyte SX5 are available to all University of Dundee researchers for real-time imaging in phase contrast and Green and Red fluorescence.

The facility offers:

• Proliferation
• Migration
• Invasion
• Co-culture assays
• Organoid culture analysis
• Label-free cell-health analysed by AI
• ATP metabolism
• cell-by-cell analysis

Measure treatment effects automatically and non-invasively. IncuCyte cell proliferation assays allow every well of a 96/384 well plate to be imaged and analyzed automatically to provide a microplate readout of cell proliferation over time. Proliferation time-courses reveal concentration-dependent treatment effects. Transform data into concentration-response curves to compare pharmacology.

Resources

• University of Dundee IncuCyte website

Information, training, and bookings

If you’d like to find out more about the facility, please get in touch with Dr Lindsay Spender to discuss training and bookings.  Charges apply for use of the machines.

Academic Lead: Dr James Cantley

About

The Immunoassay Biomarker Core Laboratory provides immunoassay determinations of biomarkers in biological fluids, specimen processing and sample logistics for both internal and external collaborators across a variety of therapeutic indications. 

All staff members have current Good Clinical Practice (GCP) certificates and have attended both GLP and GCLP training courses.  The laboratory follows GCP for laboratories principles and participates in Quality Assurance audits.

We can provide help and advice on the selection and performance of immunoassays. Sample requirements and handling for optimal results. 

We can offer a full service to measure samples for you or provide training on using some the instruments thereafter only usage charges applied.

Equipment & Facilities

Biomarker measurement methods include enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assays (ELISA) luminescence or fluorescence assays (including HTRF [Homogeneous Time Resolved Fluorescence]), multiplex assays up to 100 biomarkers and ultra-sensitivity assays.

• Bio-Rad Bio-plex 200 [Luminex 200]
• Meso Scale Discovery (MSD) Quickplex SQ120
• Tecan Spark Multimodal Plate Reader
• Fluid X XSP-200 liquid handling and sample formatting station
• Thermo Scientific Multi-drop Regent Dispenser
• Point of care testing platforms
• Various dedicated Immunoassay auxiliary equipment

Get a quote or discuss projects

If you have any queries or looking for quotes, please contact Cheryl Wood ([email protected]) or Abirami Veluchamy ([email protected]) or Sharon King ([email protected]).

About

The Health Informatics Centre (HIC), based within the School of Medicine at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, The University of Dundee is an ISO27001 accredited, Scottish Government regional ‘Safe Haven’ or ‘Trusted Research Environment’(TRE). HIC have also successfully completed the essential DSPT assessment against the National Data Guardian’s 10 stringent data security standards.

This means that HIC facilitate, as trusted data custodians, the safe, efficient and governance managed use of de-identified health data on behalf of the NHS and Scottish Government for legitimate research use. HIC maintains, as a data processor, anonymised records for approximately 20% of the Scottish population, in particular the health boards of Tayside and Fife. This is providing ‘big-data’ scale expertise and technical compute systems for research alongside the development of tools for future use within the clinical systems and collaboration with industry partners. Our team are managing population data for over one million patient records extending back approximately 30 years.

These data are governed, curated and managed by HIC as a trusted partner to enable timely, secure researcher access to specified cohorts and data linkage. This has been implemented for the last 5 years by the use of a virtual and controlled environment under ISO27001 provisioned for researchers who have been through MRC based research governance training. HIC has operated throughout this period a "Five Safes" approach which is a core principal of HDR UK which HIC implements as an Alliance member:

• Safe People: Technical skills to use the data; compliance training; confidentiality agreements
• Safe Projects: Research appropriateness; ethical; will benefit public; research published
• Safe Setting: Researcher only access; controlled virtual environment; no data distribution
• Safe Outputs: Export of results controlled for publication; confidentiality maintained
• Safe Data: Data within the controlled environment is de-identified

This research managed process is supported by HIC’s secure data and infrastructure team and governance manager with external support from the respective partner health boards and layperson representation.

HIC maintains a unique position in our adaptability to solve research questions and tackle problems at the forefront of data science. This is because the data custodianship is allied to a strong in-house software development and infrastructure team. In short, HIC combines secure data management/software development and academic research to tackle the development of data science applications for health, social care and associated data.

Visit Health Informatics Centre, TRE and the Discovery Portal for more information.