The Radioimmunoassay and Biomarkers Core proposes to continue offering an increasing number of high quality immunoassay services to our evolving group of Diabetes Research Center (DRC) basic, translational, and clinical scientists. Services over the last cycle have included radioimmunoassay (RIA), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and multiplex ELISA on the Luminex platform for an expanding variety of diabetes and metabolism related hormones and cytokines derived from blood, urine, and tissue samples. These assay services have proven essential for current research in the DRC and Penn's Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism (IDOM) and will remain an integral part of the future operation and development of the Center and Institute. In the next cycle the RIA/Biomarkers Core will expand its existing services to include the development of assays on a more sensitive multiplex platform based on digital ELISA (Simoa). Simoa technology will be used to develop a novel glucagon ELISA necessary for low sample volume islet studies in rodents and in perifusion experiments, and to implement accurate multiplexing of cytokines at 1000-fold increased sensitivity required for understanding the intersection of inflammation and metabolism in rodent and human studies, and so enhance the value of assay services for DRC investigators. In addition, the Core will proactively engage in outreach to the local research community of diabetes, obesity and metabolism investigators, while enhancing the QA/QC/QM of the assay services provided. In addition, the RIA/Biomarkers Core will integrate delivery of new and existing assay services to an expanding base of investigators in a new state of the art-laboratory housed within IDOM. The new laboratory location will place the Core on the same floor and in near proximity to the Islet Cell Biology, Functional Genomics, and Mouse Phenotyping, Physiology & Metabolism Cores that will enhance the already close interactions among these DRC Cores. The integrated delivery of assay services provided by the Core will be enhanced by further development of informatics infrastructure for ordering, tracking, billing and delivery of service. The performance of a large number of RIAs and ELISAs in a central core facility rather than in scattered locations throughout the University provides a significant overall savings in equipment, personnel effort, and supplies for our investigators, while importantly allowing for the generation of results with better quality due to our enhanced quality control/quality assurance/quality management (QA/QC/QM) processes. We will continue collaborations with other NIH- sponsored core resources and the School of Medicine at Penn in order to enhance and expand the number of services available to our investigators, increase efficiency and technical expertise in the provision of assay services, and continue to improve our throughput and data quality.
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