The laboratories and offices of the integrated cellular tissue-engineering / regenerative medicine (iTERM) group headed by Dr. Lelkes are located on the 5th and 14th floor of the Drexel's Center City Campus, on the premises if the Drexel University College of Medicine, New College Building. The three senior group members work at present with a total of 3 postdocs, 12 graduate and 4 undergraduate students. The laboratories comprise three "individual" laboratories and a cell/tissue culture room for a total area of ca. 3,600 square feet, which includes approx. 1000 square feet of office space for faculty and students.
Animal: Fully AAALAC- accredited animal facilities are available institution-wide. These are based on the 14th and 15th floors of the New College Building
Office: The offices are fully networked via high-speed internet access and also via wireless Ethernet cards. In addition to desktop and personal computers for all faculty and graduate students, there are eight more PC computers available throughout the laboratories for the use of students/staff. Weekly laboratory meetings provide the opportunity for all students to formally present their data and also discuss pertinent literature. Administrative support is provided through the BIOMED offices.
Major equipment in Dr. Lelkes's lab:
- 3 separate cell culture facility a setups (laminar flow, hoods, CO2 incubators, centrifuges, etc), one setup/room specifically reserved for stem cell research
- Common equipment room (-20oC, -80oC freezers, centrifuges,), cryogenic storage facilities
- Separate facilities for molecular biology (separating working with RNA (isolation) and DNA (PCR)
- 2 Cytofluor fluorescence microplate readers, Dynal conventional microplate reader, Turner luminometer
- Perkin Elmer Spectrofluorimeter, Bio-Rad spectrophotometers
- Cryostatic and Regular Microtomes and complete histology (routine and immuno-histology) set-up, critical point dryer for SEM sample preparation
- 3 setups for advanced light microscopy (Nikon (FX, Northern Eclipse), Leica DMRX-40RFL, for phase contrast, fluorescence) with integrated advanced image processing/analysis capabilities
- 3 separate setups for studying mechanical activation / migration of cultured cells exposed to flow/shear, cyclic strain, pressure), Flexcell system, TGT flow loop
- 1-D and 2 -D gel electrophoresis, including western blotting, zymography, computer-based 1-D gel analysis
- Basic and Advanced Molecular Biology (e.g. RT-PCR, EMSA, Promoter Deletion Analysis)
Common core equipment in the College of Medicine:
- Closed Hypoxia Hood (New College Building)
- Real-time qPCR (New College Building)
- Cone and Plate Rheometer (New College Building)
- Proteomics Facility (New College Building)
- Genomics Facility (Queen Lane campus)
- Flow cytometry (New College Building)
- Confocal Microscopy (Queen Lane Campus)