Health and medical services
Conestoga's Bio Hub pioneers technology and supports thorough health and medical research. Our labs offer comprehensive capabilities for histological analysis, including precise tissue processing, sectioning, and staining.
We excel in hematological analyses, providing detailed insights into blood composition, clotting factors, and real-time blood gas measurements. Additionally, our serum chemistry capabilities enable a wide range of diagnostic tests, including the measurement of proteins, electrolytes, therapeutic drugs, and hormones.
These advanced capabilities support research in pathology, hematology, immunology, and drug development, ensuring thorough and accurate analysis for various applications.
Equipment and instrumentation
- HistoCore Arcadia C+H: For tissue processing and embedding.
- HistoCore BIOCUT Microtomes: For tissue sectioning.
- Autostainer XL: For slide preparaDxH 690T and XNL 430: For complete blood counts (CBC), providing comprehensive analysis of blood samples, including red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and reticulocytes.
- ACL Elite and ACL TOP 350CTS: For measuring clotting factors in blood plasma to diagnose blood clotting diseases.
- GEM 5000: For real-time measurement of blood gases, pH, electrolytes, metabolites, and CO-oximetry.
- Echo Lumena: For fully automated determination of blood type (ABO and Rh(D)) and antibody detection.
- SERO 12 Serofuge: For separating serum from whole red blood cells.
- AU480 Chemical Analyzer: Performing a wide range of diagnostic tests on urine and serum samples, including proteins, electrolytes, therapeutic drugs, and illicit drugs.
- Access 2: Conducting immunoassays to measure hormones and antibodies, aiding in diagnosing autoimmune disorders, detecting reproductive hormones, and cardiac markers.
Research applications
Conestoga's Bio Hub health and medical capabilities are ideal for a variety of research applications:
- Histology and pathology: disease biomarker discovery, disease diagnosis and progression, analysis of tissue damage, and toxicology testing.
- Hematology: analysis of blood disorders affecting blood cell count and clotting factors.
- Immunology: investigation of immune cell populations and antibodies, and their responses to infections or treatments.
- Serum chemistry: measuring metabolites and electrolytes to study metabolic disorders, pharmacokinetics analysis, and biomarker discovery.
- Drug development: pathological, hematological, and immunological assessments to determine drug efficacy and safety.
Instrumentation highlights
AU480 Chemical Analyser
The AU480 is a wet chemistry analyser that carries out a range of diagnostic functions on urine and serum samples. It performs a large array of tests such as measuring proteins, electrolytes, therapeutic drugs and drugs of abuse.
ACL TOP 350CTS
The ACL measures clotting factors in blood plasma samples by detecting changes over time to determinepatients with blood clotting diseases such as Hemophilia, von Willibrand's disease, and monitoringanticoagulant use.
Echo Lumena
The Echo Lumena is a fully automated blood bank instrument used to determine blood type and presence of antibodies using small microwell strips. Assays include ABO and Rh (D) typing, IgG antibody detection, compatibility testing between donor and recipient, and red blood cell phenotyping.
Autostainer XL
The slide autostainer is used for the visualization of tissue samples using biological stains. The process is very fast and efficient, allowing many tests to be carried out in a short period of time. It is typically used to easily visualize tissue morphology for detection of clinical conditions.