The newly renovated, state-of-the art laboratories and offices of the new Department of Bioengineering, specifically of integrated tissue-engineering/regenerative medicine team, headed by Dr. Lelkes, are located on the 8th and the 9th floors of the Engineering Building at Temple University. The open wet laboratory space on the 8th floor (approx. 2 x 12,000 square feet) is shared by up to 8 faculty members. In addition to the work space in the open labs (all together 14 lab benches, ca. 20 foot long each, accommodating up to 8 work-stations), there are 8 chemical fume hoods, 4 fully equipped cell culture facilities, 4 microscope rooms, 1 histology room, 2 prep rooms, and ample storage space. The wet labs are all equipped with Milli-Q water purification systems and dishwashers. In addition to the wet labs we also have dry labs, both on the 8th and the 9th floor to carry out some of the proposed studies (e.g. electrospinning). Graduate students are either housed in the wet/dry labs close to their work places, or in 2 special graduate student rooms on the 8th and 9th floor.
Equipment
In addition to new core equipment of the department (e.g. high-end spinning disk-confocal fluorescence/live cell microscopes, confocal laser-scanning microscope, Olympus FSX and dedicated high-resolution histology/stitching microscopes, FEI SEM, state-of the art protein detection capabilities, Accuri flow cytometer, IVIS whole animal live imaging, optical CT, freezer-farm, etc.), Dr. Lelkes’ laboratory has the following equipment:
- 2 separate cell culture facility setups (laminar flow, hoods, CO2 incubators, centrifuges, microscopes, etc), one of the setups is specifically reserved for stem cell research
- 5 complete setups for electrospinning (horizontal and vertical, single and multi-nozzle with fixed and rotating targets), including robotic automated focused 3-D electrospinning system
- Cryostatic and Regular Microtomes and complete histology equipment
- Critical point dryer for SEM sample preparation
- Instron M55 for mechanical testing
