20,000+ square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory space.
PURPOSE-BUILT FOR GLP-COMPLIANT MOLECULAR TESTING
AltheaDx’s PCR laboratories were purpose built to specifications for Good Laboratory Practices compliance and complete prevention of contamination. Different rooms are used for reagent preparation, nucleic acid extraction, PCR and rtPCR set up, amplification, and analysis. The laboratories for nucleic acid extraction and PCR set up are outfitted with eight PCR workstations equipped with UV lighting, four biological safety cabinets (one for RNA extraction and the remainder dedicated DNA extraction). Each of our PCR workstations and biological safety cabinets carry a dedicated set of basic laboratory equipment. The facility also contains a tissue culture area replete with tissue culture hoods, CO2 incubators and cryogenic storage.
AltheaDx’s laboratories have multiple high-speed, refrigerated centrifuges manufactured by Beckman, Sigma and Eppendorf, as well as multiple -20˚C and -80˚C freezers which are monitored 24 hours a day, with back-up generator power available. Other equipment include Molecular Devices plate spectrophotometers, Wallac fluorescent plate readers, ABI 3100 fluorescent capillary systems, Beckman CEQ8800 fluorescent capillary systems, ABI 7700 sequence detection system, ABI 7900 sequence detection systems, Roche Lightcycler 480II real-time PCR systems, Life Technologies ViiA™ 7 Real-Time PCR System with automation, Luminex flow cytometer, Agilent Bioanalyzer, Affymetrix GeneScan microarray systems, multiple end-point thermal cyclers, Savant fast prep system FP120 tissue homogenizer as well as a Retsch Mixer Mill 300 homogenizer.
The facility also makes extensive use of automation including QIAGEN Symphony and QIAGEN BioRobot M-48 automated nucleic acid isolation systems, QIAGEN Qiacube extraction systems, Packard multiprobe II, and multiprobe II EX HT liquid handling systems, Beckman BioMek 2000s, Beckman MultiMek and a Perkin Elmer Evolution P3. All instrumentation is dedicated for automating DNA/RNA extraction and the performance of PCR and rtPCR.
The genomic analysis laboratory makes use of several instances of Oracle database software to track project information and data collected off of the real-time and multiplexed PCR platforms. AltheaDx uses the DecisionSite (Spotfire) and R software package for the statistical analysis and visualization of genetic data.
