Colorado Tissue Procurement and Processing Core

Overview

The overall mission of the Tissue Procurement and Processing (TPP) Core is to facilitate access and usage of tissues and services to meet the specialized needs of the diabetes research community to expedite and catalyze innovative diabetes research at UC AMC. This core will establish and expand resources to assist DRC investigators with the acquisition and processing of rodent and human tissue, and specialized cell lines that are broadly required for diabetes research.

For the past 20 years, the services provided by the BDC-based facility has provided high quality tissues to BDC investigators. The new TPP Core will allow us to expand access to all DRC investigators studying the pathogenesis of Type1 (T1D) and Type 2 (T2D) diabetes.

In addition, there is increased need for primary human tissue. We have established a centralized facility to facilitate access to human tissues from external sources (University of Alberta, Edmonton), and internally through the UC-AMC Pathology Biorepository/Tissue Distribution Facility.

Services

The TPP Core will also provide diabetes-related histopathology services, training in basic and specialized sample preparation and processing procedures, and will offer DRC members access to resources such as validated commonly used reagents and equipment. Finally, the TPP Core will provide a cell banking service to distribute validated diabetes-related cell lines to DRC investigators. These services will facilitate individual studies, in addition to promoting collaborations between investigators.

Major services to be provided by the TPP core include:

• tissue preparation, including rodent and human islet isolation and processing;
• procurement of primary human tissues from local, national and international sources;
• sample processing for histological analysis;
• validated and optimized reagents, such as antibodies and probes; and
• validated cell line distribution.