Provides state-of-the-art mass spectrometry analysis of proteins and metabolites for both basic and clinical cancer research.

The goal of our Core Facility is to assist cancer researchers who need to analyze cells and tissue samples based on large antibody panels to define cell phenotypes and signaling pathways in tumor cells, healthy cells, cells of the tumor microenvironment, and immune cells tasked with destroying cancer cells.

The UTSW Bioinformatics Core Facility provides expertise in developing computational solutions that resolve complexities with biomedical data processing. Serving the UTSW research community, the facility interacts with researchers in a range of formats to provide consultation, education and collaboration on research projects.

The purpose of the core is to provide cellular therapy products prepared under current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) for the treatment of children with cancer. The core will also prepare cGMP grade retroviral vectors for the genetic modification of cells used in pediatric therapy of cancer. It can additionally provide assistance in the preparation of regulatory applications to the FDA for clinical trials of cellular therapy in childhood cancers.

In 2012 the Center for Innovative Drug Discovery (CIDD) was established as a joint venture between the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio to build a comprehensive and innovative pre-clinical research center for the discovery of novel therapeutics to serve South Texas. The CIDD comprises the High Throughput Screening Core at UT Health SA and the Medicinal Chemistry Core at UTSA, and has always had shared governance that incorporates expertise from both the pharmaceutical industry and academic centers. The overall mission of the CIDD is to successfully catalyze collaborative cancer research programs that facilitate the translation of basic scientific discoveries into tangible pre‐clinical candidate drug candidates that can be further developed into clinical candidates.

The RNAcore provides services for the development and generation of high-fidelity RNA for any gene/loci of interest.

This state-of-the-art facility provides access to the 2017 Nobel-prize winning technology of atomic-resolution single particle cryo-electron microcopy (cryo-EM) and cellular cryo-electron tomography to tackle unanswered questions in structural cell biology and to provide a new understanding of the molecular causes of diseases. Determining the three-dimensional structures of cellular machineries (protein complexes) with this detail is essential to understanding the mechanisms of cancer, identifying drug targets and developing (better) therapeutics. The major goals of the CPRIT Core Facility Support Award are to support: (1) 24/7 facility operations and expert technical assistance, (2) purchase of new equipment to increase efficiency of cryo-sample-preparation and –optimization, (3) an educational programs to raise awareness of the research opportunities afforded by these new methods and to train the next generation of cryo-EM/ET experts, and (4) a Service Facility for single-particle cryo-EM structure determination, which is especially helpful for cancer research labs that would like to benefit from this cutting-edge technique and facility, but don’t plan to become EM experts and/or invest several months into training of lab members.

Provides cutting-edge imaging technology of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for biomedical research. This technology is especially suited for understanding cancer initiation and progression mechanisms, intermediary metabolism of cancer cells, prognostic evaluation of cancer patients, and eventually the early and individualized diagnosis and corresponding efficacious treatment of cancer.

Provides a "big data" infrastructure for cancer research and provides data science and informatics services to cancer researchers at all levels, including molecular, cell, tissue and organ, individual, and population research. The DSICCR translates the cutting-edge data science and informatics research to easily accessible, high-quality, and user-friendly software and services to advance cancer research.

Supports multi-investigator, multi-institutional grants using advanced imaging technology to accelerate drug discovery and therapeutic development through leading edge R&D and screening via live and fixed cell confocal and deconvolution microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and fully-automated high throughput microscopy.

Provides access to a state-of-the-art drug development core facility with participation of experienced faculty from Texas Southern University and University of Houston Colleges of Pharmacy, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Gulf Coast Consortia for Quantitative Biomedical Science.

Flow cytometry is the method of choice for both immuno-oncology and leukemia/lymphoma research because it is ideally suited to studies with non-adherent cells and also studies that require co-cultures of tumor cells with cells that constitute their micro-environment. Until recently the power of flow cytometry as a tool for cancer research has been limited by the very low sample throughput of conventional flow cytometers.

This problem has recently been solved by the development of automated flow cytometers that allow investigators to test the activity of thousands of drugs and drug combinations on cancer cells and immuno-therapeutics. Automated flow cytometry will have a transformative effect on immuno-oncology and leukemia/lymphoma research by enabling the use of screening technologies to identify new drugs and new combinations of drugs that can be used for the treatment of many types of cancer.

We will establish a new multi-institutional core facility, the Gulf Coast Consortium (GCC) High-throughput Flow Cytometry Program (HtFCP) that will be equipped with specialized high -throughput flow cytometers and staffed by experts in high-throughput drug discovery research. The HtFCP will support researchers in the screening very large libraries of drugs and experimental agents for cancer therapeutic activity. We will also provide investigators with libraries of drugs that have already been approved for use in patients. By focusing on the repurposing of approved drugs we can insure that the most promising discoveries from screening studies can be moved rapidly into clinical testing.

The HtFCP’s valuable resources will be available to researchers from the GCC’s member institutions (Texas A&M IBT, Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Houston, UTMB, UTHSC-Houston, and Rice University). The HtFCP serves as a model for the power of collaborative research to promote the discovery of the next generation of cancer therapeutics.