CORE 3: IMMUNOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY Dr. Rasley (PI) and Dr. Weilhammer (Co-I) will establish and operate an Immunology and Pathology Core that serves the Cooperative Research Center for Nano-Scaffold Vaccines Against Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct) by providing facilities, expertise, effort, materials, and information management that helps achieve the aims of all three research projects. We have the established laboratory facilities, instrumentation, and storage necessary for all immunological assays that will be performed as part of this Core, as well as access to a state-of-the-art animal AAALAC accredited animal facility. We will establish and maintain standard operating procedures and training materials sufficient to develop the personnel with the expertise necessary to reproducibly perform procedures needed to support the immunological analyses needed by the individual projects. The Immunology and Pathology Core will be staffed to provide the effort required for all animal studies and subsequent immunologic analyses as well as properly acquiring and processing samples that will be sent offsite for analyses (pathology; UC Davis). The core will be highly centralized with personnel and facilities at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), with the exception of the pathology analyses which will be performed at UC Davis. The Immunology and Pathology Core can also work as a user facility, providing training and access to facilities that might enable research and development for the individual projects that do not have the expertise or equipment at their locations. The core will also compile all data generated for each Project and provide a comprehensive report to the Project PIs. Using a platform such as Box, we envision data from the Cores be available to all team ambers at any given time in order to facilitate cross fertilization of ideas.
