The Biospecimen Accessioning and Processing Core provides exceptional biorepositories and biospecimen processing and storage using the highest precision and latest technology.

The Biospecimen Accessioning and Processing Core provides investigators with pre-analytical processing and storage for a variety of biospecimen types to support the translation of scientific discoveries into clinical practice.

The core's range of services includes:

Support for setting up study-specific infrastructures needed for biospecimen collection, processing and routing.
Accessioning and processing.
Nucleic acid extraction, plating and peripheral blood mononuclear cell isolation and cryopreservation.
Bodily fluid processing for microbiomes, including DNA extraction.
Storage, shipping and sample collection kit assembly.
The Biospecimen Accessioning and Processing Core is fully automated and highly scalable for virtually all of these processes. Automation includes:

Sample sorters.
Robotic liquid handlers for blood processing and aliquoting, including plasma, serum, urine, buffy coat and red blood cells.
Nucleic acid extractions.
DNA plating, and sample storage.
The core also provides a range of storage solutions, including conventional freezers with a temperature of minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius), liquid nitrogen freezers and robotically controlled high-capacity freezers that are maintained at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius).

Histology Core specializes in processing, embedding, sectioning, and staining of animal tissues. The core can supply standard hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining, and a variety of standard special stains are available. The Histology Core also offers veterinary pathology support through GEMpath Inc.

Mayo Clinic's Electron Microscopy Core offers transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and serial block-face electron microscopy services. The core provides scientific and technical support to investigators pursuing ultrastructural studies.

The facility is expertly staffed and equipped to provide:

Project consultation.
Specimen preparation.
Imaging and data analysis.

Investigator training for equipment operation and data analysis also is available.

The Structural Biology Core was established to offer advanced instrumentation and support for the structural characterization of biological macromolecules to investigators at Mayo Clinic and its partner institutions.
The Structural Biology Core currently supports cryogenic sample electron microscopy (cryoEM), along with associated services such as training, data collection, processing, analysis, and data storage. Future services will include nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography.

CryoEM, the Core houses a Thermo Fisher Scientific 200 kV Glacios 2 cryogenic transmission electron microscope (TEM) equipped with a Selectris X imaging filter and Falcon 4i direct electron detector. This instrument is used for single-particle cryoEM, cryo-electron tomography (cryoET), and microcrystal electron diffraction (microED).

The Human Model Systems Core currently provides researchers with access to high-quality human induced-pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) production, expansion, validation, and quality control services, while strictly adhering to approved protocols, ensuring high-quality standards and consistency throughout the process.

Services under development include production of iPSC-derived organoids and microphysiological systems as well as scalable provision of healthy control and genetically modified iPSC lines for research and test development.

Targeted Biomarker Core is a specialized facility that provides immunochemical, chemistry and immune testing at an affordable cost to clinical and basic science researchers, develops and validates new assays, and improves current assay methodology.

Services include:
•Extensive test menu (see facility website)
•Assay development
•Automated chemistry analysis
•Immunoassay analysis
•Small molecule analysis
•Mass Spectrometry, LC-MS/MS and HRAM LC-MS, both high-flow and nano-flow
•Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), and radioimmunoassay (RIA) procedures for various analytes
•Multiplexing options available through ELLA, Olink Targeted Panels and Flex Panels, Alamar NULISA Panels, Luminex 200, and MesoScale Diagnostics
•Ability to perform most commercially available assays or kits
•Expertise in quantitation of peptides, steroids, hormone, bile acids, sugars, other small molecules

The core offers state-of-the-art tools to precisely modify the genome of cells and organisms using CRISPR-Cas9-based editing, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi), and CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) systems. Our platforms enable high-throughput genetic screening, gene knockouts, transcriptional modulation, and sequence editing with high efficiency and scalability.

The Precision Mouse Engineering Core at Mayo Clinic generates transgenic and gene-targeted mice for researchers at Mayo Clinic's campuses in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Mouse models are important tools for studying the underlying causes of many diseases, including cancer. Transgenic and gene-targeted mice generated by the core enable researchers to observe how genes, or mutant variations of genes, are expressed.

The Precision Mouse Engineering Core, directed by Darren J. Baker, Ph.D., M.S., also is a shared resource of Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. The core provides services to all Mayo Clinic faculty and staff engaged in research. Also, services are offered to non-Mayo investigators and research collaborators. For more information, please contact the core.

Mayo Clinic's Biomedical Imaging Resource Core in Rochester, Minnesota, focuses on supporting and advancing research in biomedical imaging and visualization sciences.

Study teams at Mayo and around the world use the core to facilitate their research through reproducible image analysis and robust data management. The core provides guidance on protocol design, routine image analysis, and custom software and hardware solutions. Also, media and model production resources are available to investigators for the creation of high-quality visualizations and physical models of research data.

Core staff includes scientific and technical experts with more than seven decades of combined imaging experience.

As a trusted and reliable resource for clinical investigators, the Biomedical Imaging Resource Core allows investigators to stay focused on their own research rather than having to become imaging experts themselves. By enabling efficient and high-quality imaging research, the core helps speed the movement of promising therapies from the lab to the patient.

The Biomedical Imaging Resource Core provides services to all Mayo Clinic faculty and staff engaged in research. Also, services may be available on a limited basis to investigators and research collaborators outside Mayo Clinic. Before scheduling, contact the core to design optimal settings for the specified imaging task.

This core can generate custom monoclonal antibodies in mouse and hamster systems. We can also produce large amounts of antibodies (of all species) and recombinant proteins in-vitro. Purification is also available for various systems.

The Immune Monitoring Core at Mayo Clinic provides services to Mayo Clinic researchers seeking to study immunological phenomena. Services include:

Designing assays to identify and quantify immune cell subpopulations
Characterizing and measuring immune function
Monitoring immunological changes in response to both specific and nonspecific stimulation
Mass Cytometry (CyTOF, Helios)
Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC, Hyperion)
Multiplex Immunofluorescence (Akoya Phenocycler-Fusion)

The core supports experimental systems to study human and mouse models by providing expertise and standardized assays to evaluate immune functions in a broad range of diseases and therapies in models as well as in healthy human subjects with variable demographics.

The Immune Monitoring Core provides services to all Mayo Clinic faculty and staff engaged in research. Selective services are available to investigators outside Mayo Clinic.

Proteomics involves analysis and identification of protein structure and function. Through Proteomics Core, investigators at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere have access to a broad range of proteomics services, technologies and guidance to help them answer scientific questions. Toward a goal of improving patient care, the core offers services and conducts research in the areas of mass spectrometry-based differential proteomics, peptide synthesis, protein and peptide purification, and protein identification, characterization and expression.