Our facilities

Our laboratory based research is conducted at a number of sites across the University campus:

We are able to access a number of excellent facilities:

  • The CRUK Manchester Institute, including the core molecular biology facilities and the state of the art advanced imaging facilities
  • The SCALPL facilities in the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre (WMIC) provide cutting edge mass spectrometry expertise
  • Bioinformatics support from both the CRUK Manchester Institute and the Institute of Human Development
  • The Manchester Children’s Tumour Registry (MCTR) is a unique population-based resource of comprehensive data and bio-samples from cases of childhood solid tumours and their families. The MCTR comprises:
    • Clinical data and histopathological material on incident cases, aged 0–14 years, resident in NW England and diagnosed from 1954 onwards
    • Data on cancers, congenital abnormalities, birthweights, other diseases and demographic factors on over 3,400 children with solid tumours, diagnosed 1954–2008 and their families
    • Constitutional samples for approximately 1,700 solid tumour cases/relatives collected from 1992–2008.

Parents are flagged at NHS Medical Research Information Service for cancer registrations and causes of death, providing life-long follow-up on patients and their parents. Information and samples on extended families are gathered on selected cases. This provides us with a considerable advantage for detection of familial patterns of susceptibility, particularly relevant since the patients are diagnosed during childhood, when parents are still relatively young and, in inherited cases, may not present at clinic for many years after the index child has been diagnosed.