Administrative Office
2570 MSRB II
1150 West Medical Center Drive
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0674
734 647 4776
734 936 2622 fax

The Biosafety Containment facility provides a safe environment for the culture and analysis of pathogenic organisms.

Facility Personnel

Steven R. King, PhD, Director
(734) 763-4859

Facility

The core laboratory is designed specifically for research, clinical and diagnostic procedures involving infectious agents that may cause serious or potentially lethal conditions as a result of exposure to the agent. All manipulations of infectious material in the Core laboratory are performed in primary containment biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices within the laboratories. The two laboratories have special secondary containment features such as restricted access, negative pressurization, pass-through autoclaves, and sealed penetrations. The facility is fully equipped with 6 biosafety cabinets, 8 tissue culture incubators, high and low speed centrifuges, ultra-low temperature freezers, microscopes, ELISA plate washer and reader and additional equipment related to this type of research.

Services

The facility is dedicated for work involving pathogenic Risk Group II and III viral agents, including HIV-1, HIV-2, HTLV-I, Hepatitis B and many other indigenous human pathogens. Experiments involving the production and analysis of recombinant viral vectors expressing potentially hazardous gene products may also be performed in the facility. Certain projects need prior approval by the University Core review committee and/or the recombinant DNA advisory committees before any procedures can be performed in the facility.

Instruction in the safe use of the facility and supervision of laboratory studies is available for investigators who would like to perform their own experiments. Services are available for the screening of compounds/recombinant proteins for HIV antiviral activity on a limited basis by staff members. Characterized stocks of both cloned and clinical strains of HIV are available for infection studies.

Fees

Trained users are charged an hourly rate for use of the laboratory plus the cost of any disposables used. Fees for training investigators and for antiviral screening performed by staff members are determined on a case-by-case basis. For further information contact Steven King.