Advanced Cell Exploration Core
Facility Overview
The Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry (FoMD) Advanced Cell Exploration (ACE) Unit is a multi-user core facility at the University of Alberta. Originally established in 2010 as the RNAi Core, it was rebranded in 2019 to the High Content Analysis (HCA) Core. In 2021, The Applied Genomics Core merged with the HCA Core. This facility was again rebranded to the ACE Unit in 2023 to better reflect the scope of technologies it houses.
The facility operates on a fee-for-use basis, which allows partial cost recovery for operating expenses. Facility operating costs are supported through the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) awards to contributing investigators. User fees are used to cover the cost of consumables and partially cover service contracts and maintenance.
The ACE Core houses leading edge equipment to facilitate a variety of techniques that fall into the following technology nodes:
- Nucleic Acid and Sequencing Technologies
- Single Cell Profiling
- Genetic and Chemical Screening Libraries
- Auxiliary Platforms
Research Resource Identifier - RRID:SCR_019182
Flow Cytometry Core Facility and Advanced Cell Exploration Core User Committee
- Dr. Troy Baldwin - Academic Lead of the Flow Cytometry Core Facility, Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology (MMI)
- Dr. Kristi Baker - Department of Oncology
- Dr. Jason Plemel - Department of Medicine
- Dr. Harissios Vliagoftis - Department of Medicine
- Dr. David Evans - Academic Lead of the Advanced Cell Exploration Core, Department of MMI
- Dr. Aja Rieger - Manager, Flow Cytometry Core Facility (Voting)
- Michael Wong - Coordinator, Advanced Cell Exploration Core, FoMD (Voting)
- Dr. Richard Lehner - Vice-Dean, Research (Basic), FoMD (Non-voting)
- Colleen Sunderland - Manager, Core Research Facilities, FoMD (Non-voting)