Core Facilities & Scientific Platforms:
Top-Notch Equipment & Expertise in Support of Top-Notch Scientific Research
Core facilities are the legs and lungs of the research and teaching missions of research-intensive universities like McGill. Our Faculty hosts world-class equipment and specialized staff at the service of research and teaching excellence on campus. More facilities are available at our affiliated teaching hospitals and their respective research institutes. Please riac.med [at] mcgill.ca (contact us) for any queries or click on the links below for more information about each scientific platform.
- Advanced Bioimaging Facility (ABIF)
- Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain (AECRP-Core Facilities)
- Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics (C3G)
- Comparative Medicine and Animal Resource (CMARC)
- Centre for Structural Biology Research (CRBS)
- Facility for Electron Microscopy (FEMR)
- Flow Cytometry Core Facility (FCCF)
- Histology Innovation Platform
- McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC)
- McGill Applied Genomics Innovation Core (MAGIC)
- McGill Integrated Core for Animal Modeling (MICAM)
- McGill Platform for Cellular Perturbation (MPCP)
- Metabolomics Innovation Resource (MIR)
- Neuro Microscopy Core Facility
- Pharmacology & Therapeutics
- Imaging and Molecular Biology Platform (IMBP)
- Surface Plasmon Resonance - Mass Spectrometry (SPR-MS)
- Primary Airway Cell Biobank (PACB)
- Single Cell Imaging & Mass Cytometry Analysis Platform (SCIMAP)
- SecureData4Health (SD4H)
Core Platforms of The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital)
Advanced Bioimaging Facility (ABIF)
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
| To provide advanced research support for all aspects of bioimaging from planning to publishing to the McGill research community, Canadian and International researchers. | Bellini Life Science Complex (map) |
Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain (AECRP-Core Facilities)
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
|
To bring together the McGill community of basic and clinical pain researchers to promote research that will result in cures for chronic pain. Through activities and international collaborations, the Centre focuses on new discoveries and their clinical applications that will improve the prevention and treatment of chronic pain. |
mcgill.ca/painresearch/facilities | Duff Medical Building (map) |
Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics (C3G)
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Bioinformatics platform at the McGill Genome Centre that provides for-fee bioinformatics analysis, software development, training and data organization services to the McGill and broader life sciences research community. | computationalgenomics.ca | McGill Genome Centre (map) |
Centre for Structural Biology Research (CRBS)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The CRBS is dedicated to facilitating cutting-edge research in the area of biophysical and structural biology. It operates as a multi-platform facility including a macromolecular X-ray analysis hub, a cryo-electron microscopy prep hub, a high-throughput crystallization hub in addition to mass spectrometry, and NMR infrastructure. CRBS personnel are highly skilled and dedicated to providing expert support to researchers. |
 CRBS |
crbsmcgill.ca/facilities | Bellini Life Science Complex (map) |
Comparative Medicine and Animal Resource (CMARC)
| Mission | Website | Locations |
|---|---|---|
| To provide high-quality care to animals and facilitate research and teaching. Professional animal care and veterinary staff are dedicated to the health and well-being of the animals under their care and are a resource of comprehensive services supporting McGill's fundamental mission of education and research. | mcgill.ca/cmarc |
Facility for Electron Microscopy (FEMR)
| Mission | overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To provide the research community at McGill University and beyond with electron microscopy services for the characterization of biological samples and advanced materials, enabling scientific discoveries that will significantly impact Canadians' economy, health, and quality of life. | FEMR |
mcgill.ca/femr | Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building (map) |
Flow Cytometry Core Facility (FCCF)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To make high-end flow cytometric technology available to the McGill research community located at the main downtown campus at reasonable cost. | FCCF |
mcgill.ca/gci/innovation-platforms/flow-cytometry-innovation-platform | Bellini Life Science Complex (map) |
Histology Innovation Platform
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
| To provide a full range of routine and specialized histology services for members of the Goodman Cancer Institute, the Life Sciences Complex, McGill University, and broader research communities. The facility provides quality histology results for researchers who do not have the specialized expertise, equipment, or resources to conduct these experiments in their own laboratories. | mcgill.ca/gci/innovation-platforms/histology-innovation-platform | Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (map) |
McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The unique platform infrastructure of the McConnell BIC is available and accessible to all researchers. We offer one of the largest brain-imaging research and service platform worldwide. All imaging cores are hosted under the unique roof of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and hospital. Every year, the McConnell BIC scans >3,500 research participants with a multimodality of 7 research-dedicated scanners for humans and animal models. |
BIC |
mcgill.ca/bic/core-facilities | The Neuro (map) |
McGill Applied Genomics Innovation Core (MAGIC)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| The McGill Genome Centre within the Victor Philip Dahdaleh Institute of Genomic Medicine, supports Canadian and international researchers with expertise and state-of-the-art, high-throughput technologies and pioneering methods for forefront genomic research. We are committed to integrating next-generation sequencing into groundbreaking biomedicine and life sciences research. | MAGIC |
mcgillgenomecentre.ca/platforms/sequencing-genotyping | McGill Genome Centre (map) |
McGill Integrated Core for Animal Modeling (MICAM)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To support McGill researchers through providing state of the art services in the creation of animal models to facilitate and accelerate scientific and medical discovery. | MICAM |
mcgill.ca/gci/innovation-platforms/mcgill-integrated-core-animal-modeling-micam | Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (map) |
McGill Platform for Cellular Perturbation (MPCP)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To provide all McGill researchers with low-cost and rapid access to arrayed and sequence-verified collections of ready-to-use lentiviral shRNA, cDNA and CRISPR knockout clones as well as entry ORF clones available for Gateway cloning, covering human and mouse genomes. Upon service request, we provide McGill researchers with these essential platforms required for genetic perturbation in genes of interest and collaborate with researchers for high throughput screening studies. | MPCP |
mcgill.ca/gci/innovation-platforms/mpcp | Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (map) |
Metabolomics Innovation Resource (MIR)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To serve as an extension of each client’s laboratory by providing analytical expertise, high quality and reproduceable metabolic phenotyping, and assistance with data analysis. In service of this mission, we provide in-depth training for PIs, staff, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in experimental design, data collection and downstream analysis. | MIR |
mcgill.ca/gci/innovation-platforms/metabolomics-innovation-resource | Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (map) |
Neuro Microscopy Core Facility
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
| To cover the advanced microscopy requirements of researchers, which cannot be met by microscopes present in the individual laboratories, and to further develop state-of-the-art microscopy at the MNI and throughout the life sciences community in Montreal. Currently, we serve the advanced microscopy needs of 29 MNI laboratories as well as 13 laboratories throughout McGill University and 6 academic laboratories from outside McGill representing 146 certified active users. | mcgill.ca/neuro-mic | The Neuro (map) |
Pharmacology & Therapeutics Platforms
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Imaging and Molecular Biology Platform (IMBP): to provide researchers with the unique ability to analyze the effects of drugs, drug candidates and chemicals on cellular behaviors down to the genome and the epigenome levels to gain insight into changes in phenotypic biomarkers in subcellular organelles, cells, tissues, and living animals. We assist users with the development of new approaches, with experimental design and data management and analyses, provide training and support to enable them to acquire high quality data for publication and offer professional services to the McGill community, academics from other institutions and industry. Surface Plasmon Resonance - Mass Spectrometry (SPR-MS): to better understand health, disease, and therapeutic design, the McGill SPR-MS Facility (Dept. Pharmacology & Therapeutics) houses unique technologies and expertise to accelerate research and training involving protein interactions (e.g. SPR/BIACORE: label-free, real-time binding kinetics, affinity, mechanism) and/or top-down proteomics (e.g. MALDI: rapid in-source decay sequencing, label-free tissue imaging; ESI-qTOF: intact protein LC-MS; digests and PTMs). |
IMBP |
mcgill.ca/pharma/core-facilities-resources/core-facilities | McIntyre Medical Science Building (map) |
Primary Airway Cell Biobank (PACB)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| To facilitate basic research and translational research on respiratory diseases by 1) preparing biomaterials from human lungs for world-wide distribution, and 2) developing novel pre-clinical models of cystic fibrosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pulmonary fibrosis for use in therapeutic development. | PACB |
mcgill.ca/cftrc/platforms/primary-airway-cell-biobank-pacb/services | McIntyre Medical Science Building (map) |
Single Cell Imaging & Mass Cytometry Analysis Platform (SCIMAP)
| Mission | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|
| To offer mass cytometry services for analyzing dissociated tissues and blood (Helios) and tissue sections (Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) - Hyperion), with dedicated, highly qualified personnel to assist with marker panel development. SCIMAP is available to researchers within the McGill as well as Canadian and the international research community. | mcgill.ca/gci/research/innovation-platforms/single-cell-imaging-and-mass-cytometry-analysis-platform-scimap | Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (map) |
SecureData4Health (SD4H)
| Mission | Overview | Website | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SD4Health is a secure cloud infrastructure for analysis and sharing of genomic and health data. Through SD4H, we will be able to build an unprecedented resource that will enhance our capacity for genomic and health data analysis by orders of magnitude. |
SD4H |
sd4health.ca | McGill Genome Centre (map) |
Core Platforms of The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital)
- Brain Health Outcomes Platform
- C-BIG Repository Data Portal (Overview: C-BIG)
- CBRAIN Distributed Computing Platform
- Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU) (Overview: EDDU)
- McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC)
- Neuro Microscopy Core Facility
- NeuroHub Neuroinformatics Platform (Overview: Neurohub)