Translational Pathology Core Facility The Translational Pathology (Core) Laboratory (TPL) is designed to meet the needs of basic, clinical, and population scientists who require analysis of human tissues. TPL provides access to formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded tissues from UNC Hospitals, histopathology services, tissue and cell microarrays, morphological evaluation, morphology-based assays (immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, in-situ hybridization, and fluorescence in-situ hybridization), assay development & training, and digital imaging and image analysis for spatial quantification of molecular analytes in intact specimens. TPL is led by Drs. C Ryan Miller (Faculty Director), a leader in translational research and molecular analyses of tissues, and Nana Nikolaishvili-Feinberg (Facility Director), a researcher with experience in all morphological assays and digital image analyses. The LCCC has made significant investments in the TPL to expand services, to purchase forward-looking equipment, to increase capacity through additional staffing, and to develop informatics infrastructure to facilitate case identification, workflow improvements, and integration of digital images and quantitative image analysis data. The latter will allow integration of data from morphology-based assays with those from OMICS technologies. Core use expanded significantly in 2007-2009, in capacity and total service units performed. This year, 51 Pis from eight different LCCC research programs and 36 clinical trials utilized the Core. In 2009, total use was 29,975 service units (80% LCCC members). For 2010, the Center requests $175,126 for personnel and other expenses to support this Core, a 63% increase from 2009, to be allocated towards additional personnel and maintenance contract costs for both existing and newly acquired equipment. Access to and utilization of this core facility will promote the translation of basic science findings to human cancers and permit clinical investigators to perform innovative clinical trials using molecular correlates and endpoints. It will serve population scientists with molecular epidemiology studies on large numbers of samples that require morphological evaluation and assays. Future plans include acquisition of additional automated image analysis equipment and informatics integration with the Bioinformatics Core databases through the LCCC Data Warehouse.
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