Core Facilities | Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

The COBRE Center for Cancer Research Development (CCRD) Molecular Pathology Core Laboratory

The COBRE CCRD core facility provides state-of-the-art instrumentation, support, and technical training for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and faculty at the Warren Alpert Medical School and its affiliated hospitals. Services include automated immunohistochemical staining, tissue microarry production, laser capture microdissection, quantitative real-time PCR, and data and image analysis.

The Superfund Basic Research Program Molecular Pathology Core Laboratory

This core facility, located at the Laboratories for Molecular Medicine at 70 Ship Street, provides scientific evaluation and diagnosis of pathologic alterations at both the cellular and organismal level for animal models of toxicant-induced disease. The following services are provided: paraffin, plastic, and frozen tissue sample preparation for light microscopy, biological sample preparation for transmission and scanning electron microscopy, and whole mouse embryo embedding and serial sectioning.

Lifespan Clinical Research Center

Located in the Lifespan Clinical Research Center (CRC), the lab serves as a resource for sample processing and shipping to support a broad range of clinical trials. Our staff can assist with the development of specimen processing procedures for upcoming studies that might have unique needs. Also located at the Lifespan Immunology Research Lab, the biobank serves as an in-house specimen repository that can be used by Advance-CTR investigators.

Maternal and Perinatal Tissue Bank

Women and Infants Hospital is the major referral center for all high-risk pregnancies (21,000 deliveries annually) in Southeastern New England and a major participant in prenatal screening programs. This hospital has an extensive archival collection of maternal and fetal serum samples, cytogenic analyses, placental samples, and perinatal autopsies available for clinical and translational research. Dr. M. Halit Pinar is Director of the Division of Perinatal Pathology and oversees this tissue and specimen bank at Women and Infants Hospital.

Brain Tissue Resource Center

The Tissue Resource Center at Brown performs neuropathologic examinations on all brain and tissue donations from Alpert Medical School's affiliated hospitals and distributes these tissues to investigators engaged in research. Neuropathologic examination procedures maximize the information obtained from individual brains and optimize the quality of the tissues distributed to specific research projects. Standardized protocols for brain dissection and blood and cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) collection ensure an identical and complete evaluation of all cases. Widely accepted diagnostic criteria are used to permit precise pathologic classification in accordance with current standards utilized at other academic and medical centers.

These tissue banks are anonymous non-profit programs in accordance with HIPAA and Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulations. Investigators are required to complete a detailed tissue request and IRB project approval.

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