Facilities

We have designed and built a new state-of-the-art research Institute on the Murdoch University campus, comprising two floors covering 3600 sqm, which has been designed to optimise interactions and productivity of the various teams. Half of the ground floor is allocated to clinical facilities including a clean room suitable for GMP manufacturing of in-vivo diagnostic reagents or therapeutics, and clinical trial facilities including a pharmacy and venesection facility.

The 1st floor has specimen reception with extensive purpose-designed biologic repository facilities and high throughput automation labs with pre- and post-PCR areas. The cellular immunology laboratory suite includes a PC3 laboratory, along with radioisotope laboratory facilities. It is intended that patients that can most benefit from research in clinical trial activity will be attracted to the new facilities, including patients with HIV infection, Hepatitis C and B infection, multiple sclerosis as well as healthy volunteer studies. In the longer term the particular approaches and techniques available in the building could augment the care of patients with other conditions associated with immunopathology.

Following the development of automated and quality-managed high-throughput platforms for molecular methods (sequence-based HLA typing, SNP typing and viral sequencing) and for cellular assays, we have now undertaken and completed the National Association of Testing Authorities of Australia (NATA) accreditation for this laboratory system under the Research & Development program (ISO/IEC 17025, R&D). The Institute became the second Australian laboratory to be accredited under this scheme on October 7 2008 (# 15785), with a scope of accreditation including HLA and SNP typing, viral sequencing, and cellular (ELISpot) assays. The Institute is also accredited by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI) for sequence-based HLA typing.

The Institute’s is supported by the following key platforms:

• BioRad thermocyclers C1000 and CFX
• Sample concentrators (GeneVac)
• Ultracentrifuge (Beckman)
• PC3 facility
• BC Gallios Flow cytometer
• ABI MagMax automated nucleic acid extraction
• Genfind, Beckman FX (Nucleic acid extraction)
• ABI 3730 XL (Sanger sequencing)
• Roche 454 FX (Deep sequencing)
• Beckman FX and NX liquid handling (with integrations)
• Sterile liquid handling for cellular work (BC FX)
• Nikon Eclipse 80I Fluorescence microscopes
• Comprehensive LMS
• ELISpot reader (including fluorescence)
• MultiNA (nucleic acid analysis)
• Agilent Bioanalyser (nucleic acid analysis)
• Epipop (analysis software)