Most departmental facilities are located on the fifth floor of the Cooke-Hochstetter Complex, a relatively new building consisting mainly of teaching and research laboratories for the pharmaceutical sciences and biology. The department has a total of 28 laboratories assigned to its faculty members on the North Campus, plus conference rooms, glass washing room, animals holding room, walk-in cold room, and individual offices. Also located in the building complex are the University Animal Facilities, including several surgical laboratories, under the direction of a veterinarian and with a full-time staff of several experienced technical personnel.
Research equipment in the department includes liquid chromatography/mass spectrophometers, ultracentrifuges; scintillation counters; gamma counter; high performance liquid chromatographs; spectrophotometers, including gas chromatographs, physiographs; computer-aided imaging equipment; cell culture facilities; fluorescent and uv/visible plate readers; phosphoimager; peptide synthesizer, fluorescence and circular dichroism spectrometers, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis instrumentation, and the usual standard research equipment. There is also a graduate student computer facility in the department. (This list does not include instruments used primarily for undergraduate instruction.) Two faculty members (Drs. Straubinger and Balasubramanian) serve as directors of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Instrumentation Facility.
The department recently established a Pharmaceutical Genetics Laboratory (PGL). The PGL assists faculty and graduate students in the School of Pharmacy take advantage of the wide array of molecular genetic techniques currently available to address questions concerning gene expression, bioinformatics and genotyping. In this capacity the PGL also provides extensive education and training reflecting the latest genetic technologies available. The laboratory has all the necessary equipment for the isolation and characterization of DNA/RNA/mRNA including microcentrifuges, refrigerators, freezers, gel electrophoresis equipment, DNA/RNA GeneQuant spectrophotometer, and PCR thermocyclers (3, one thermocycler has a gradient block). For microarray studies the laboratory has a separate room (165 sq ft), certified for isotope use with a hybridization oven, incubators, refrigerator, and centrifuge. The laboratory has a NEN large-format phosphoimager and a multiplex quantitative PCR system (Mx4000TM Stratagene) for the real-time quantitative measurement of PCR products.
The University is served by a comprehensive health sciences library, a modern computer center, and a well-equipped instrument shop. The departments of the basic health schools of medicine and pharmacy, together with the University-affiliated teaching hospitals and the Roswell Park Memorial Institute (one of the largest cancer research institutes in the world) provide outstanding opportunities for professional consultation and collaboration.
