The instrument will be housed in the CSIF and available to researchers across the Stanford campus.
The LLSM technology delivers much lower light dosage while achieving signal-to-noise ratios that are equal to or higher than other conventional live-cell imaging modalities. It has the advantage of 1) minimizing photobleaching of the fluorophores and thus lowers the requirement of extensive optimization of fluorophores used for labeling, and 2) it greatly minimizes phototoxicity and thus extends typical imaging time by at least an order of magnitude with uncompromised frame rates.
The School of Medicine’s Dean’s Office is contributing startup funding to staff the services provided on this new instrument. Installation is scheduled for summer 2019.
With financial support from the Beckman Center, the School of Medicine’s Dean’s Office and the Stanford Cancer Institute, the CSIF has purchased a CODEX, highly multiplexed imaging platform together with an epifluorescence microscope and analysis workstation. This combined instrument will allow automated, highly multiplexed, antibody localizations of potentially an unlimited number of proteins on tissue sections or tissue arrays, with cellular level of resolution. The CODEX instrument will provide greatly increased throughput and analysis of multiple cancer, neurological and other tissue specific markers which will allow phenotypic cluster analysis of different cell types within their spatial context. The facility will provide image analysis and pipeline development support, as well as, develop and validate antibody panels for research groups. The CSIF’s CODEX service will start in early 2019.
In collaboration with the Otolaryngology Department at the Medical School, the CSIF has purchased a Leica ICE High Pressure Freezer (HPF) with the capacity to do optogenetic light and electrical stimulation. This new HPF will allow larger, thicker sample loading for ice-free vitreous ice freezing, the gold-standard for cell preservation than previously available and will be used for advanced ultrastructural and immuno- EM localization studies in the EM lab. This new instrument was installed in December 2018.