The Amarillo regional campus of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) is the main campus for the Jerry H Hodge School of Pharmacy (SOP), and the new School of Veterinary Medicine. In addition, the TTUHSC School of Medicine has a significant presence with clinical services, student/resident teaching, and several funded investigators. The SOP in particular has a strong research mission, with about 15 full time faculty conducting bench research. Over the past 20 years, cancer research has been at the focus of research activities, with several faculty at any given time being funded from the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense programs in cancer research, or CPRIT...

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The Amarillo regional campus of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) is the main campus for the Jerry H Hodge School of Pharmacy (SOP), and the new School of Veterinary Medicine. In addition, the TTUHSC School of Medicine has a significant presence with clinical services, student/resident teaching, and several funded investigators. The SOP in particular has a strong research mission, with about 15 full time faculty conducting bench research. Over the past 20 years, cancer research has been at the focus of research activities, with several faculty at any given time being funded from the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense programs in cancer research, or CPRIT. A state-of the-art imaging facility is an indispensable component of any competitive biomedical research institution. The SOP maintains an imaging core since 2004. The present application aims at significantly expanding the capabilities of this core by addition of three cutting edge instruments. All have only become commercially available very recently, due to rapidly evolving technology in this field. The first instrument is a confocal microscope system, which allows optical imaging of living cells at a resolution previously only achievable by electron microscopy. The impact of this technology is best illustrated by the fact that the inventors won a Nobel Prize in 2014. The second instrument is an automated imager, which enables long term observation of living cells (hours to days) under conditions causing minimal levels of phototoxicity. The third instrument is capable of whole animal live imaging with fluorescent dyes emitting in the near infrared range. This instrument achieves very high resolution and a depth of imaging sufficient to visualize the entire body and internal organs of a mouse completely in a non-invasive fashion. Collectively, these instruments will greatly enhance the quality of obtainable data in ongoing and future cancer research projects.

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