Cellular Generation and Cellular Screening

Scientific Operations

The Cellular Generation and Cellular Screening groups are core facilities that provides central cell biology support to the Sanger Institute, functioning as a contract research group in partnership with faculty groups to carry out multiple, distinct and often large-scale cell biology projects. Some examples of our work include finding the genes essential to cancer cell survival, and the causes of rare developmental disorders. We also contributed to the COVID-19 Genomics UK consortium.

Cell Biology Research

Organoid culture: generation of new cancer organoid models and performing genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 knockout screens in cancer/patient-derived organoid lines to identify genes essential for survival (Project Gro and Score 3D)

Neural differentiation: differentiation of knockout hiPSC lines into neural stem cells (DDD-NeuGen) and cortical neurons in the presence of glial proteins, to study their effects on synapse formation (iNeurons).

CRISPR/Cas9 screening: identification of novel synthetically lethal gene targets in cancer lines (CRISPR Adams) and measuring variability in human gene essentiality in healthy individuals using hiPSCs (Parts HiPSCi).

Histology: processing tissue samples to section, stain and analyse anatomical structures under light or fluorescent microscopes, using H&E, Visium and RNAscope (Histology service). Donor tissue dissociation into single cell resolution to carry out RNA-Seq, to create a reference map of all cells in the human body (HCA project).

COG-UK: Cellular Screening played an instrumental role in the Institute’s contribution to the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, involving large-scale, nation-wide virus sample and metadata collection, preparation, sequencing, analysis and data visualisation.

CellOps Scientific Support team: supporting our research, we have a dedicated team that produces coated cultureware, reagents and specialist media to order. They also provide mycoplasma screening, sterility testing, reagent batch testing and cell banking services for Cellular Generation, Cellular Screening and other teams within Cellular Operations.

R&D

Work in the group is underpinned by a research and development function which undertakes continual improvement across the group in order to introduce new techniques and to increase capacity and quality of existing ones.

Other Initiatives

Technician Commitment

Members of Cellular Generation and Cellular Screening teams volunteer their time to be part of the Technician Commitment (TC). The TC aims to increase the visibility and recognition of technical staff across the Institute, as well as promoting their career development and sustainability of this national initiative. The TC is led by a Steering Committee who ensure the delivery of the action plan, across six different working groups. Cellular Generation and Cellular Screening TC members are represented across the ‘Marketing and Communications Working Group, and the ‘Events Working Group’. To see the impact these working groups are having at the Institute then please look at the Technician Commitment page.

Training

As a team we are dedicated to sharing our expertise internally within the institute, and externally. This includes through providing internal training courses through the Technician Commitment, and external iPSC culture training through the Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses.

Charity Team

Cellular Operation’s charity team are responsible for organising fundraising events to support local Cambridgeshire charities. These fundraising events are a mixture of smaller internal events and large annual events put out across the Institute. As well as fundraising events, Cellular Operation’s charity team will promote and volunteer for local charities, using the Institute’s two full-paid volunteering days initiative.

Our first event was a huge success. We raised over £1000 for Arthur Rank Hospice and CPSL Mind through our 5 million steps throughout July 2020 challenge. We hope to replicate this success in future events.

Protocols.io

Our expertise in large-scale research means that our protocols have been rigorously tested to ensure they are robust, effective and highly replicable. We believe that there is great value in sharing such protocols amongst the scientific community, for other labs to discover and easily compare the specifics of their methodologies to other groups practicing similar work.

Click here to find all of Cellular Generation and Cellular Screening’s published protocols.

Click here to read a blog post, in which we explain our reasons for sharing our protocols with the wider scientific community.