Facilities
Figure 1. Laboratory space in the Center for Biomedical Engineering.
CBME is composed of 16,000 square feet of laboratory space in UNM's Centennial Engineering Center (Figure 1). The facility houses equipment and facilities for biotechnological research and materials for surface modification and analysis including flow cytometry, surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy, UV/Vis spectroscopy, and a suite of commercial and custom made fluorescence spectroscopy instrumentation. CBME's optics laboratory (~2000 sq. ft.) contains several optics tables, optomechanics, and optical systems, including Raman, infrared and fluorescence capabilities. All labs are equipped with sinks, fume hoods, laboratory bench top areas, and flammable storage. Each laboratory has a common use computer, along with those required to run specialized equipment.
Equipment capabilities include a separate microscopy room that houses upright and inverted fluorescence microscopes, and a Zeiss LSM 510 confocal scanning laser microscope (2 laser/4 color). CBME houses an Accuri C6 analyzing flow cytometer and a three-laser BD FACSVantage flow cytometer. The CBME also has a Molecular Devices SpectraMax M5 fluorescence plate reader equipped with emission and excitation monochromators and 384-well plate reading capability. Equipment includes a Biacore X-100 surface plasmon resonance instrument, Perkin-Elmer UV-VIS spectrophotometer, two PTI QuantaMaster fluorimeters, one with lifetime measurement capability, an Aviv 410 circular dichroism spectrometer, a Molecular Imaging atomic force microscope, Raman instrumentation including a Horiba 750M spectrometer with visible and near-infrared laser excitation sources and LN-CCD detector, a Thermoelectric FTIR spectrometer equipped with surface reflectance measurement capability, a Malvern Zetasizer zeta potential instrument, a spectroscopic ellipsometer, an rf reactor for plasma polymerization, an electrosprayer, static and dynamic light scattering detectors, a Langmuir trough with fluorescence microscopy, a suite of commercial and custom made fluorescence spectroscopy instrumentation, an AKTA FPLC, an Agilent 1100 HPLC, and a service-center (fee based) Waters ultra-performance convergence chromatography/mass spectroscopy system.
CBME research also benefits from facilities within the larger University of New Mexico research environment. Examples of particular importance include access to a full suite of electron microscopy tools through UNM's Center for Micro-Engineered Materials,access to the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center Microscopy facility, which houses four confocal microscopes including a Leica TCS-SP8 Confocal Microscope and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging System (3 laser/prism-based emission), a Zeiss LSM510 META Confocal Microscope (4 laser/2 color/spectral detector), a Zeiss LSM510 Two-photon Confocal Microscope (3 single-photon, infrared two-photon/2 color/spectral detector), and an Olympus DSU Spinning Disk Confocal Microscope, and to the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center Flow Cytometry Facility, which houses, among other instruments, a Becton Dickinson LSRFortessa (4 laser/15 detection channels), a Sony iCyt SY3200 high-speed cell sorter (4 laser), and Becton Dickinson FACScan and FACScalibur flow cytometers (3 and 4 color analysis, respectively). Researchers within CBME also have access to the UNM School of Engineering machine shop, which is professionally staffed and fully equipped.