Year 1

This year has been devoted to hiring staff to operate the Core, purchasing and setting up Core equipment, officially opening the Core for stem cell research, and teaching two stem cell culturing courses in the Core. On August 1, 2010, we hired an Academic Coordinator to oversee operation of the Core. He played a vital role in purchasing equipment and preparing for the opening of the Core. In addition, the Academic Coordinator has been responsible for day-to-day operations of the Core since it opened for general use, for training users, and for overseeing the Core staff. Between August 1, 2009 and the official opening on January 29, 2010, we evaluated and purchased most of the equipment for the lab, had equipment installed, and underwent training on the new equipment. The Core offers three cell culture suites, an equipment room, an analytical room, a microscopy room, and a cytogenetics workstation. In September 2009, the Core hosted the CIRM site visit team which toured the facility prior to its completion. In December, we hired a temporary staff member who also helped prepare the lab for opening in January. The UCR Stem Cell Core Facility opened officially on January 29th 2010, and a day long Grand Opening event was held. This was attended by over 200 people from UCR, other California campuses, high school teachers, and members of the community. The Grand Opening featured tours of the Core, information on accessing and using the Core, lectures, a poster session, and an image contest. We also launched a website for the Core which contains complete information on the facility, as well as the resources and services offered by the Core. The website can be found at www.stemcellcore.ucr.edu . The Core also set up a Sales and Services operation to enable users to buy most items needed for their research from the Core. This has been very successful and has facilitated use of the Core. Since the official opening, we have had extensive use of the Core equipment and culture facilities. We have provided lab space for culturing stem cells for faculty who can not culture in their home labs. Users can also purchase stem cell cultures from the Core for their research. We also offer state-of-the art equipment which has been extensively used by our stem cell labs at UCR. Some of our equipment is available only at the UCR Core (e.g., we have a Nikon BioStation CT that enables high content collection of time lapse video data of dynamic cellular processes). In April, we taught a one week hands-on laboratory course to Bridges students from California Polytechnical Institute (Pomona), and in June, we taught a two week human embryonic stem cell culturing course for credit (CMDB 211) to UCR graduate students. The Core hired two new temporary staff this July. These staff help with inventories, ordering, maintaining and passaging cultures, and free-up time for the Academic Coordinator to work with faculty and students on their projects. Data collected in the Core were presented in posters at the annual meetings of the International Society for Stem Cell Biology in June 2010, and a paper using Core equipment was published in May 2010. Our faculty have been using the Core to conduct research dealing with differentiation of bone cells, wound healing, differentiation of endoderm, scaling up procedures for growth of pluripotent stem cells, creating new lines of reporter cells, creating induced pluripotent stem cells, and evaluation of environmental toxicants using stem cells. To bring stem cell information to the local community, the Core has been engaged in numerous outreach activities. We have hosted many tours through the Core and provided information and help to others in the Riverside/San Bernardino area who are working with stem cells. We are currently preparing to offer workshops on the use of Core equipment to introduce new users to the capabilities of the Core and to facilitate use of the Core.