Purdue's Discovery Park
Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease (PI4D)
The Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease (PI4D), is part of the Life Sciences Initiative at Purdue. PI4D leverages the broad range of expertise in life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, to develop new diagnostics. PI4D assembles teams of investigators to probe basic biology and inflammatory processes, to commercialize novel interventions and methods for controlling an array of chronic inflammatory conditions, cancer and infectious diseases. PI4Ds core strengths are organized into four areas: Infectious Disease, Immunology & Inflammation, Cont. & Intervention, Imaging & Diagnostics.
Purdue University Center for Cancer Research
The PCCR was established as an NCI basic science cancer center in 1978, with a mission focused on basic discovery - discovery that is the foundation through which the Center fosters innovative cancer solutions. Notably, the Center not only supports basic discovery but also facilitates discovery application and, where possible, positions discoveries for transfer to the public domain. Purdue University strengths in engineering, veterinary medicine, nutrition science, chemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacy, structural biology, and biological sciences, form the core foundation upon which the Center facilitates discovery centered on understanding the biology of the cancer cell, developing innovative technology to probe cancer-related phenomena, creating diagnostic and imaging tools, and synthesizing unique therapeutic chemical entities that can be delivered to the cancer cell by novel technology.
Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery (PIDD)
Founded in 2013 to leverage Purdue's strengths across all points of the drug-discovery pipeline, the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery (PIDD) is accelerating the translation of basic research into life-changing treatments. The mission of PIDD is to create an innovative research environment that will stimulate the discovery, synthesis, evaluation and clinical translation of new drugs for the diagnosis and therapy of human diseases.
Bindley Bioseciences Center (BBC)
The Bindley Bioscience Center provides a unique infrastructure to support interdisciplinary research. Laboratory space and high-end scientific equipment is shared and available to support diverse projects, ranging from complex diseases to technology development to new catalysts for biofuels production. An expert staff provides research consultation and technical support to enable technology implementation, feasibility studies, and the generation of pilot data to support new project ideas.
Selected Shared Resources
The Purdue Cryo-EM Facility is a member of the Purdue EM Consortium and a designated Indiana CTSI Core Facility. Our facility is available to Purdue, other academic institutes, and industry users. It provides state-of-the-art instruments and expertise for high resolution structure determination of viruses, larger macromolecular complexes, nano-particles, as well as tomographic visualization of virus-cell interactions by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and three-dimensional (3-D) image reconstruction.
The Purdue Interdepartmental NMR Facility
The Purdue Interdepartmental NMR Facility (PINMRF) provides access to state-of-the-art NMR techniques for Purdue University as well as for area businesses and technology parks. The Facility has spectrometers located in laboratories in four buildings on the Purdue campus. These spectrometers include nine solution-state machines ranging in field strength from 300 to 800 MHz and one 400 MHz wide-bore solids spectrometer. These spectrometers are able to perform the entire gamut of modern NMR techniques, and are used by researchers in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry/Pharmacology, and other departments in areas as diverse as protein structure determination, organic chemistry support, and metabolomics.
The Macromolecular Crystallography Shared Resource (MM-SR)
The MM-SR is located in the Hockmeyer Hall of Structural Biology (HOCK) and, was formally established as a Shared Resource in 1998. Since the beginning of its history, this Resource has been committed to the support of macromolecular crystallography projects of Purdue researchers. For over 15 years, this Resource has made available state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction instrumentation, crystallization robots, crystal visualization systems and temperature-controlled crystallization rooms to all Purdue researchers, which includes a high concentration of macromolecular crystallographers.
Purdue Life Science Imaging Facility
The Purdue Life Science Imaging Facility has wide-field, confocal, multiphoton, and superresolution fluorescence microscopes that can be used for live-cell imaging and photoactivation experiments. There are two in vivo imaging systems with gas anesthesia, and there is a fully accredited animal housing facility with veterinary staff in the same building to support animal studies, with one animal facility and holding facility on the same floor as the imaging facility.
The Purdue Mass Spectrometry Center
This center provides a range of instrumentation to execute many common mass spec techniques, such as election impact (EI), chemical impact (CI), fast atom bombardment (FAB), matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI), and electrospray ionization (ESI).
Purdue Biophysical Analysis Laboratory Core Facility
The Purdue Biophysical Analysis Laboratory Core facility is available for use on campus. This facility houses an iTC200 Isothermal Titration Calorimeter (ITC) for thermodynamic binding measurements, a Biacore 3000 Surface Plasmon Resonance instrument and an Octet Red384 both for kinetic analysis of molecule binding. All instrumentation is available on a fee for service basis and facility is staffed with PhD level personnel available for instrument training, data collection and data analysis.
Purdue Life Sciences Microscopy Facility (LSMF)
The Life Science Microscopy Facility provides Purdue researchers access to state-of-the-art electron microscopy instrumentation and to provide service, consultation and training to assist scientists in achieving their research objectives.
Purdue Biosciences Imaging Facility
Purdue Biosciences Imaging Facility provides instruments and expertise needed to visualize molecules in preparations ranging from single cells to entire animals. All facility users receive individualized instrument training as well as project specific advice for optimal data acquisition. Consultation on sample preparation, image rendering, and data analysis are also available.
Synchroton Source
Currently, Purdue faculty access beamlines 14 (BioCARS), 22 (SER-CAT) and 23 (GM/CA) of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the Argonne National Laboratory. This is about 100 miles away, or about a 2.5-hour car journey. X-ray diffraction data can be collected through rapid-access requests at the LS-CAT beamline. Also, small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) data can be routinely collected at the Bio-CAT beamline. In addition, many faculty ship samples and work remotely from Hockmeyer Hall when appropriate. BioCARS also has BSL-3 containment available by arrangement.
Biosafety Level 2 Facilities
The use of biohazardous agents requires approved protocols, which address such issues as virus propagation, virus purification, freezing of virus samples on grids for electron microscopy, analysis of frozen samples by electron microscopy, etc. These written protocols require approval from the Institutional Biosafety Committee at Purdue University prior to use and are regularly updated and reviewed to maintain approval. The use and operation of the facility is also routinely overseen, including inspection, by staff associated with Purdue’s Radiological and Environmental Management. All BSL2 virus propagations will be performed in the approved BSL2 containment facility located in Hockmeyer Hall, Purdue University.
Biosafety Level 3 Faclities
Established and approved protocols are required for BSL3 viruses which address, in detail, such issues as virus propagation, virus purification, freezing of virus samples on grids for electron microscopy, analysis of frozen samples by electron microscopy, etc. The Institutional Biosafety Committee at Purdue University must approve written protocols prior to their use. The daily use and operation of the facility is also routinely overseen, including inspection, by staff associated with Purdue’s Radiological and Environmental Management. An approved facility within Hockmeyer Hall of Structural Biology is available for work with BSL3-level infectious samples.
Rosen Center for Advanced Computing
The Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC), a component of ITaP, is a research computing center at Purdue University. RCAC provides advanced computing resources and services to support the computationally intensive research of Purdue faculty and staff. RCAC maintains several computing clusters where faculty can purchase nodes for their specific use.