School of Biomedical Sciences, CUHK

Histology Core provides instrumentation for producing histological slides from frozen and paraffin embedded tissues. The laboratory is equipped with automated enclosed histo-processor, microtomes, cryostats, section staining set, light and fluorescent microscopes. There is also a Zeiss Axiophot fluorescence microscope fitted with a digital imaging system and spot digital camera for image analysis of microscopic slides. The laboratory also provides advice on performing routine haematoxylin and eosin staining, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescent staining and in-situ hybridization techniques for research and teaching purposes.

Flow Cytometry and Cell Culture Core is equipped with two Flow Cytometers: 1) BD FACSAria II Flow Cytometer is fitted with blue, red and near-UV lasers allowing 9-colour cell analysis and sorting, 2) BD LSR Fortessa is fitted with blue, red, violet and UV lasers allowing 13-color cell analysis. A Live cell Imaging System (Nikon Ti-E) is also available. The system is equipped with an inverted fluorescence microscope, high speed motorized controller, Perfect Focus System (PFS), high quality Xplorer XS Slider, and an incubation chamber. Each culture room is equipped with class II Biosafety Cabinets, CO₂ incubators, centrifuge and an inverted phase contrast microscope. A dissecting microscope is also installed in one of the Biosafety cabinets.

Macromolecular and Microarray Core provides equipment to perform microarray experiments, bioinformatic analysis and real time PCR. An Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer, a Nanodrop 2000c spectrophotometer, an Affymetric Microarray System (Fluidic Station 450, a GeneChip® Hybridization Oven 645, a GeneChip® Scanner 3000 7G System), an ABI Fast Real Time PCR 7900HT and several PCR machines are available.

Microscopy and Imaging Core is equipped with a Hitachi H7100FA transmission electron microscope allowing high resolution and tilt observation of resin sections and biofilm specimens and a JEOL JSM6301F field emission scanning electron microscope for examining surface morphology of critical point dried biological specimens. Besides the conventional ancillary sample preparation instruments, transmission electron microscopy sample preparation instrumentation also includes a Reichert AFS low temperature processing unit and a Leica ultracult UCT for cryo-sectiong to facilitate immuno-EM work. In addition, an Olympus FV1000-ZCD laser scanning confocal system fitted with an IX81 inverted microscope and laser sets of spectral type multi-Argon, LD405, LD559 and LD635 allows fixed and live cell fluorescence imaging.

For enquiries, please contact us at sbscore@sbs.cuhk.edu.hk