The mission of the Cell Imaging Shared Resource (CISR) is to serve the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) research community, inclusive VICC member and partners at Meharry Medical College, Tennessee State University, and other NCI Cancer Centers. CISR provides access to cutting-edge technology and expert technical support for microscopic observation and analysis of tissue and cellular anatomy and physiology essential to modern cancer research. The CISR maintains the full range of advanced microscopy and digital imaging capabilities fundamental to current cancer research methodology. CISR services have supported significant numbers of studies relevant to the mission of the VICC. Results from CISR services have been included in more than 130 VICC investigator publications during the past three years. Steady progress in microscopy-related research support of VICC investigators continues to facilitate high-quality data acquisition, storage and analysis. VICC leadership works closely with the CISR on customer surveys that allow efficient strategic planning and operational oversight. The CISR recently added a Nikon Spinning Disk Confocal microscope, a Nikon Structured Illumination microscope (SIM), a Zeiss LSM880 with Airy Scan confocal microscope, a Nikon Total Internal Reflectance Fluorescence (TIRF) microscope, and an upgrade to the existing Nikon Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscope (STORM), which will keep the shared resource at the forefront of new technology. Moreover, through a Vanderbilt Trans-Institutional Project (TIPS), Matthew Tyska, PhD along with colleagues in Biomedical Engineering and Physics established a new collaboration to advance microscopy by building a Lattice Lightsheet (LLS) microscope that is now available to the Vanderbilt community. Plans include the construction of three more LLS microscopes to provide VICC investigators with state-of-the- art microscopy of live cells. The CISR, founded as a Cancer Center Microscopy Core in 1993, is a successful model for efficient utilization of expensive resources and dedicated expertise. VICC investigators continue to obtain both significant cost advantages and vital access to a large array of valuable, advanced instrumentation and dedicated expertise from the CISR, thus enabling and accelerating cancer research that would otherwise be reduced in quantity and quality. The expert staff in the CISR also ensures that trainees learn best practices for handling microscopes and for acquiring the best images possible in a quantitative and rigorous manner that is reproducible.
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