Establishment of the Cambridge Single Cell Analysis Clinical Core Facility [SCACCF]

Recent technology developments have revolutionised our ability to characterize, quantify and isolate single cells. Examination of diseases at single cell resolution, both at diagnosis and after treatment, will transform the practice of molecular medicine by improving the quality of patient diagnosis, refining treatment options, monitoring of response to treatment, and detecting the emergence of resistance to treatment. Cambridge scientists have been at the forefront of basic research in single cell expression profiling and the analysis of circulating tumour DNA, as well as setting up local Biotech companies that develop novel single cell technologies. Here we propose to use MRC Infrastructure funding to create a new shared core facility for single cell analysis (the Cambridge Single Cell Analysis Clinical Core Facility [SCACCF]), which will serve all major molecular medicine programmes in Cambridge: cancer, neurosciences, immunity and inflammation, infectious diseases, stem cell and regenerative medicine, metabolic medicine and experimental therapeutics. SCACCF will be well placed to act as a hub for the UK and will work closely with our outstanding strategic partners in the Cambridge area (Babraham Institute, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the European Bioinformatics Institute, the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, major pharma & biotech), to bring their different capabilities to bear on clinical research challenges.