The LIBR Lab
Laboratory Services houses three laboratory rooms dedicated to human blood processing, specimen long-term biobanking, and bioassays. Human blood and saliva will be routinely collected, and blood processed, for human serum, plasma, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), aliquoted, and appropriately bio-banked for LIBR investigators. The lab is overseen by Dr. Kai Ping Burrows, Director of Laboratory Services.
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Biobanking & Storage
The specimen sample processing room contains recently purchased state-of-the art equipment including:
1) Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) laminar flow cabinet for making sterile aliquots of samples; 2) refrigerated and unrefrigerated centrifuges for blood cell processing; 3) small clinical centrifuges for serum and plasma processing; 4) automated counters for cell counting; and 5) a label-maker for labeling storage vials. |
Specimen Processing
The biobanking room contains recently purchased large, ultralow (-80oC) temperature freezers for specimen biobank and long-term storage. The biobanks are in secure rooms with access given only to approved personnel. All freezers used for biobanking are on continuous generator backup power. The freezers are monitored 24 hours per day with Sensaphone technology and Monnit Smart Monitoring Systems that email, send text messages, and make phone calls to Dr. Kai Ping Burrows in case of any disruption in power, sensor disconnection, or change in temperature. The biobanks are monitored and tracked by biorepository monitoring and inventory software (Freezerworks) and kept on the LIBR server. In addition to electronic inventories, handwritten logbooks are securely stored in the laboratory in case of server loss of function.
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Bioassay Capabilities
The bioassay room is used to measure blood or saliva-based biomarkers using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to assess immune, metabolic and stress related markers (e.g., IL-1ra, IL-6, leptin, adiponectin, HSP70, cortisol, etc.). The equipment/software in this room includes BioTek 50 TS automated microplate washer; BioTek 800 TS Absorbance Microplate Reader with onboard software through color touchscreen interface; and Gen5 software for advanced reader control, powerful data analysis; and flexible exporting/reporting tools. The automated microplate washer instrument is important for ensuring rapid and even washing of plates which reduces intra- and inter-assay variability. The Gen5 software is designed for ELISA data and generates standard curves and statistics, which are then downloaded in standardized electronic reports for the investigators. Other equipment in the bioassay room include a large laboratory refrigerator; a freezer (-20oC), and an ultralow temperature freezer (-80oC) for storing ELISA kits or reagents that require 2°C to 10°C, < -20°C or < -70°C controlled temperatures; an ice maker to create ice flakes for defrosting frozen plasma/serum samples and keeping some reagents cold during lab experiments; centrifuges to centrifuge plasma, serum, or saliva samples after defrosting; and single and multi-channel pipettors for bioassay precision and accuracy.
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