Departments - Core Facilities

The TRI Biological Research Facility (BRF) provides research support and animal husbandry services to research projects at TRI. The core facilitates effective research whilst assuring humane care and use of animals, and ensures compliance with all relevant state and federal regulations. The TRI's BRF is a full service core, committed to providing quality care for animals and full research support for users.

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The TRI Clinical Research Facility (CRF) is a controlled and safe environment to conduct research on human subjects.  The CRF is a multipurpose research centre housed directly across from the TRI in a hospital environment on Levels 4 and 5 of the Princess Alexandra Hospital R Wing, with ready access to hospital facilities and emergency response teams. 

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Flow Cytometry is a powerful tool that assists researchers to analyse cells primarily through surface markers, but also intracellular, and secreted markers.  The cell sorters allow researchers the opportunity to isolate populations of cells for cell culture, or further experimentation.  The target audience is not restricted to cell biologists and immunologists.

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The Histology Facility provides a service for the preparation of tissue samples for histological analysis.  The Facility can prepare frozen and formalin fixed samples as well as process the samples through to sectioning and various staining techniques suitable for research use. The facility provides training and access to specialised equipment for tissue preparation slide production and histochemical staining for researchers and students. It also provides a number of specialised services including tissue processing, sectioning and staining.

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The TRI has outstanding microscopy facilities including inverted fluorescence microscopes on most research floors. On Level 4, there is a fully equipped core facility.

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The TRI Preclinical Imaging facility aims to provide users with the instrumentation and expertise to undertake in vivo imaging, in live small animals. It also provides capabilities for high performance imaging of fixed samples.

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The Proteomics Facility operates as a core facility within the Translational Research Institute (TRI) with The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute acting as the service provider.  The facility operates at cost recovery to provide specialised service for TRI researchers and external users.  The facility also provides training and access to specialised equipment for sample preparation, sample analysis and data analysis.

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Mycoplasma are small prokaryotes which are a known common contaminant in laboratory cell cultures. There is often no visible sign of mycoplasma contamination, however they have been shown to alter virtually every cell culture property and characteristic measured. Mycoplasma compete with the cells for nutrients in culture media, causing reduced cell growth, increased cell death, changes to gene expression and affecting cell sensitivity to viruses and drugs. In other words, cells don’t behave the way they should.

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