Shared Research Resources (SRRs) are indispensable to modern cancer research, powering discovery through advanced technologies, specialized expertise, and strategic scientific partnership. At NCI-designated Cancer Centers, their role has expanded from core service platforms to drivers of innovation, rigor, and translational impact. In 2024, this evolution led to the creation of the National Alliance of Cancer Center Shared Resources (NACCSR), a national collaboratory uniting Shared Resource leaders to advance best practices, strengthen partnerships, and shape the future of the field. The articles in this special issue highlight key priorities including metrics, management, data and metadata stewardship, cross-institutional collaboration, and emerging technologies. Together, they position SRRs as essential architects of the next era of cancer research-one defined by innovation, reproducibility, FAIR data, and collective impact. NACCSR stands poised to help lead that transformation.
This column highlights recently published articles that are of interest to the readership of this publication. We encourage ABRF members to forward information on articles they feel are important and useful to Clive Slaughter, UGA School of Medicine, Department of Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences, 1425 Prince Avenue, Athens GA 30606. Email; cslaught@uga.edu or to any member of the editorial board. Article summaries reflect the reviewer's opinions and not necessarily those of the Association.
The shift toward the shared scientific resource model (core facilities) has resulted in a growing scientific workforce whose roles extend beyond technical expertise to include customer service, business management, and leadership soft skills. Competency in these areas is critical to success, but formal training is rare, making mentoring, coaching, and job shadowing essential tools for professional development and career sustainability within core facilities. Two professional associations, the Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) and Core Technologies for Life Sciences (CTLS), have developed mentoring and job shadowing programs to address these needs. The ABRF Mentoring Program, launched in 2016, has undergone multiple iterations, revealing key lessons around flexibility, mentor recruitment, expectation setting, relationship building, and the limits of highly automated platforms. In parallel, the CTLS Mentoring Program, initiated in 2022, emphasizes low barriers to participation, informality, and external perspectives. Both programs note reciprocal learning between mentors and mentees as a valuable outcome to program participation. Complementing mentorship, the CTLS Job Shadowing Programme provides short, immersive, peer-to-peer experiential learning focused on facility operations and management, yielding bidirectional benefits for both visitors and hosts. These initiatives are valuable member benefits for their respective professional associations. Their success highlights the important role of human connection in professional growth and demonstrates that lightly structured, community-driven programs with continuous feedback can effectively support diverse career paths in core facilities. As core facility careers continue to expand, these programs will remain critical to building a resilient, skilled, and interconnected research infrastructure workforce.
Shared Resources (SRs) are essential to advancing team science in NCI-Designated Cancer Centers by providing access to specialized expertise, advanced technologies, and state-of-the-art instrumentation. Effective SRs rely on strategic planning, continuous evaluation, infrastructure investment, and user feedback to remain responsive to evolving scientific needs. Beyond technical support, SRs strengthen institutional research capacity by fostering collaboration, leveraging resources, supporting external partnerships, and serving as hubs for mentorship and training. Regional and national efforts have also expanded multi-institutional SR networks, promoting greater efficiency, innovation, and collaboration. Integrating SRs into the broader research ecosystem creates a strong foundation for transdisciplinary discovery, institutional resilience, and sustained innovation amid changing funding environments.
Automated biomedical research laboratories (ABRLs) integrate robotics, laboratory instrumentation, orchestration software, and increasingly, machine learning and large language models to plan, execute, and interpret experiments with limited human intervention. Over roughly two decades, these systems have progressed from stand-alone liquid handlers and high-throughput screening workcells to remotely operated "cloud" laboratories, synthetic-biology biofoundries, and closed-loop "self-driving" laboratories capable of autonomous hypothesis generation and testing. This review summarizes the development and current state of ABRLs across biomedical domains, proposes a levels-of-autonomy framework, and evaluates which classes of ABRL are most readily adaptable into institutional shared research resources (core facilities). We maintain that standardized high-throughput sample-preparation and screening workcells, remotely accessible cloud platforms, and design-build-test-learn biofoundry services are the strongest near-term candidates for the core model, whereas bespoke self-driving laboratories are better suited to highly specialized cores or consortium-scale infrastructure. We outline a staged adaptation roadmap including needs assessment and governance, pilot deployment, workflow standardization with rigorous validation and quality management, informatics/remote-access and cost-recovery integration, and federation, and we address the workforce, change-management, and biosecurity-governance factors that determine success. Finally, we propose an evaluation framework that extends an eight-domain core performance model with automation-specific indicators for reliability, reproducibility, cost per result, access equity, and responsible use. Thoughtful adaptation of ABRLs offers core facilities a path to higher throughput, improved rigor and data provenance, and broader access, if standardization, workforce development, and governance keep pace.
Tracking core metrics is a critical component of centralized core facility management and is essential for ensuring that individual cores are efficiently operated, effectively evaluated, and optimally catalyze research. The National Alliance of Cancer Center Shared Resources (NACCSR) is a consortium of shared resource leaders from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) designated Cancer Centers. The NACCSR Core Metrics Committee (CMC) includes shared resource leaders from a dozen NCI-designated cancer centers. Presented here are the results of a recent CMC survey aimed at identifying core metrics critical to cancer center shared resources, including operations, usage, financials, and scientific impact. The end goals of this survey are to benchmark cancer center core metrics and to provide a base for recommendations on best practices for optimizing the tracking, evaluation, and presentation of core metrics. Moreover, these survey findings will inform evidence-based recommendations to the NCI on the essential core metrics to be incorporated into both the individual shared resource sections and the centralized shared resource management components of NCI P30 Cancer Center Support Grants.
Post-translational modifications (PTMs), such as glycation, can be introduced during the manufacturing and storage of therapeutic proteins, including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Glycation modification may alter the safety and efficacy of therapeutic drugs, thus necessitating their accurate quantification. Relative quantitation is typically performed by comparing the peak area of the glycated peptide with that of its unmodified counterparts. The accuracy of this method depends on the unmodified and modified peptides having similar ionization efficiencies, as well as on the selection of the native peptide used for quantitation. We propose using non-glycated, heavy-isotope-labeled proteins to quantify glycation. The heavy isotope-labeled proteins can provide both the relative and absolute level of glycation by comparing the peak area of the unmodified tryptic peptides to that of the heavy isotope-labeled variants. To develop this approach, glycation was intentionally induced in an immunoglobulin (IgG) to have detectable glycation. A heavy isotope-labeled variant of the IgG (containing 13C and 15N lysine and arginine residues) was added to serve as an internal standard. Further, this mixture was subjected to trypsin digestion, and a bottom-up approach using Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC)-MS was performed. The light/heavy ratio of tryptic peptides with and without a glycation site in the forced glycation sample was monitored. Any decrease in the light/heavy ratio of peptides containing a glycation site relative to the expected ratio was attributed to the production of glycated variants. Glycation quantitation in IgGs such as Adalimumab (IgG1) and Natalizumab (IgG4) was performed. We expect this approach will apply to other PTMs.
Severe allergic reactions can occur when biotherapeutics containing the carbohydrate antigen galactose-α-1,3-galactose (α-Gal) are administered. The detection of α-Gal-containing N-glycans is a challenging task due to the presence of non-α-Gal-containing isomers. This study evaluates the ability of different analytical approaches to detect an α-Gal glycan in the presence of a non-α-Gal isomer. Cetuximab is known to contain N-glycans bearing the α-Gal epitope and was chosen for the study. N-glycans released from Cetuximab were analyzed using the HILIC-MS/MS system. HILIC-MS/MS successfully separated and identified α-Gal species when the Galactose number exceeded the antenna number. However, this system could not identify α-Gal species when the Galactose number equals the antenna number. A High-Resolution Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS) was also evaluated and found to resolve isomeric α-gal/non-α-gal isomeric glycans. The study demonstrates the utility of the IMS-MS system by detecting immunogenic glycans in the presence of their non-α-Gal isomers. To our knowledge, this is the first time this specific immunogenic pair of glycan isomers has been resolved in a biotherapeutic, which was enabled by a high-resolution IMS separation.
Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) profiling analysis of lipids provides a sensitive semi-targeted approach to analyze the lipidome of biological samples. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the step-by-step analysis of MRM profiling data following acquisition on a triple quadrupole, with validation of the method demonstrated through the analysis of temporal changes in neonatal piglet liver lipidome between birth and 24 h postnatal. Following extraction of samples using the Bligh and Dyer method, lipids are profiled for a list of MRM scans on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Data standardization is required to reduce technical variability, with the selection of the approach being guided by the biological question, sample type, or system being studied. Four approaches of data standardization are described requiring either pre-acquisition standardization or post-acquisition standardization: 1) raw intensity (pre-acquisition standardization only), 2) application of internal standard (requires both pre-acquisition and post-acquisition standardization), 3) relative abundance (percent) of a lipid relative to others within a class (post-acquisition standardization), or 4) sample injection per MRM list (post-acquisition standardization). After standardization, data are normalized for parametric statistical tests to explore hypothesis, with the use of Metaboanalyst 6.0 tools demonstrated as an option for user-friendly interface in the application of multivariate and univariate analyses. Biological interpretation of findings then proceeds through the use of pathway analysis and lipid ontology tools, such as Lipid Ontology (LION). Additionally, the analysis of differential lipids’ characteristics by carbon length and number of unsaturated bonds within lipid class is demonstrated. The workflow presented provides a practical framework for transforming raw MRM profiling data into biological insights. Standardization method shapes both the statistical outcomes and biological interpretation, emphasizing the importance of selecting an approach that is aligned with the biological question being asked.
Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are small particles composed of lipids that can be used to encapsulate and deliver therapeutic substances like mRNA or other drugs to specific cells or tissues. LNPs are specifically designed to protect the payload from degradation, enhance payload stability, and improve delivery to target cells and tissues. When developing LNPs for nucleic acid-based therapeutics, there are two characteristics that are often analyzed to determine the quality of the formulations: size distribution and loading efficiency. Various techniques are used to determine the size of nanoparticles, with each providing different details and having specific advantages and limitations. In this study, we evaluated the use of nanoparticle tracking analysis, dynamic light scattering, and two different nano cytometers to determine LNP size. We compared the results obtained from these four methods to the particle size determined using cryogenic transmission electron microscopy. Our findings showed that nano-flow cytometry instrumentation, like NanoFCM and CytoFLEX nano, offers a robust and accurate method for sizing LNPs with measurements in high concordance to those obtained by conventional cryogenic transmission electron microscopy.
Core facilities source advanced technologies and expertise but can remain under-utilized because researchers, students and early-career scientists, struggle to identify relevant units or cannot articulate appropriate technical inquiries. To enhance access to users, we implemented a domain grounded conversational application based on retrieval augmented generation (RAG). It combines advanced general AI-chat behavior with restricted alignment to core-facility services by uniting a Google Gemini File Search as a structured knowledge base and a Perplexity powered web agent for conceptual scientific queries. The system workflow constrains the agents to institutional domains and routes specific operational questions to a file search knowledge base. As a result, it relies on existing core facility websites and is updated in line with them. This article describes the design of the workflow, how the system is optimized including necessary guardrails to prevent general purpose chat. It proposes evaluation metrics such as veracity, cost per interaction, latency, and examples of usage. The chatbot can help researchers better define their experimental needs, discover relevant facilities they had not previously considered, and thereby increase the visibility and accessibility of institutional research infrastructures.
The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) presents several awards annually to recognize exceptional contributions to pioneering research, biomolecular technologies, scientific excellence, career mentorship, leadership, and outstanding advocacy for inclusive science. These awards were presented during the Annual Meeting held in Pittsburgh. The top honors recognized significant scientific breakthroughs, diversity advocacy, and outstanding community contributions in biomolecular research.
Introduction/Objective:Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) resolves cell types and molecular phenotypes within heterogeneous specimens but typically requires fresh, high-quality single-cell suspensions processed immediately to preserve transcriptional profiles. This constraint complicates samples with long preparation times and prevents collection at remote sites lacking single-cell instrumentation. Several commercial assays now enable preservation at the point of collection through fixation or cryopreservation, allowing processing to occur months later. The Association of Biomolecular Research Facilities' DNA Sequencing and Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Groups undertook a cross-platform, multisite study to assess the performance and reproducibility of three such platforms: 10x Genomics FLEX, Parse Biosciences Evercode WT v2, and Honeycomb Bio HIVE. Materials and Methods:Total leukocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated from a single healthy individual, with EasySep reagent used for red blood cell depletion of the leukocyte fraction. Cells were characterized by a 21-color flow cytometry panel to provide a reference, and the remaining material was fixed or cryopreserved according to each platform's protocol. Preserved leukocyte samples were prepared in parallel by two technicians ("A" and "B" replicates) and distributed to multiple ABRF member core facilities for downstream processing, while fresh leukocytes processed with the 10x 3' v3.1 (3pGEX) chemistry served as a reference. Libraries were sequenced at a central site, and performance was evaluated across standard scRNA-seq quality control metrics, gene and transcript detection sensitivity, cell-type discovery and annotation, differential expression, and correlation analyses. Results:Data from all platforms integrated effectively and produced concordant results for cell-type annotation and relative abundance, with cell-type proportions broadly consistent with the flow cytometry reference. However, platform-specific expression signatures were evident for a subset of genes, and cross-site reproducibility varied between methods, with the FLEX workflow showing greater susceptibility to technical variation introduced during on-site sample processing. Preservation-based methods (FLEX and HIVE) showed better retention of fragile granulocyte populations than fresh samples processed with the 10x 3pGEX workflow. Discussion:Improvements to preservation methods are changing how single-cell research is conducted by decoupling sample collection from downstream processing. Our investigation into the performance and reproducibility of each platform provides a resource to help investigators and core facilities select the most appropriate single-cell preservation workflow given their sample type, cell populations of interest, sample collection logistics, and laboratory infrastructure constraints.
The 2026 Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) annual meeting took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from March 28-31, 2026, and brought scientific core directors, core staff, institutional leadership, and industry partners together into community to discuss their challenges, goals, and successes in supporting and advancing Shared Research Resources (SRRs). The tagline for the meeting was, "Innovating at the intersection of science, technology, and collaboration." For many in the SRR community, the ABRF conference is a highlight of the year, and for the over 800 attendees, the meeting this year in Pittsburgh did not disappoint!
Accurate viral genome characterization is essential for understanding viral dynamics. Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) Direct RNA Sequencing provides detailed genomic data by directly reading RNA molecules, avoiding biases from reverse transcription and PCR. However, it requires high RNA inputs and lacks a multiplexing protocol, raising costs. This study explores Direct RNA Sequencing with minimal RNA inputs and multiplexing for arboviruses. We sequenced five strains, including dengue and chikungunya viruses, to test ultra-low RNA inputs and multiplexing. Results show successful sequencing and over 99% genome coverage with ultra-low inputs, highlighting the potential of Direct RNA Sequencing in genomic surveillance and the detection of RNA modifications. This method also shows promise for future application in sequencing patient serum samples without the need for viral cultivation.
Research universities and institutes invest in building core facilities that allow investigators to access the costly instrumentation and specialized expertise needed to perform cutting edge biomedical research. For the past 30 years, the National Institutes of Health has supported the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) initiative which supports research capacity, including core facility construction, in U.S. states which receive disproportionately little NIH funding. IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) programs particularly support research in primarily undergraduate institutions (PUI) and other resource constrained sites, and have built core facilities intended to broaden access to biomedical research training to students enrolled at PUIs. However, researchers in IDeA states (especially those working at PUIs), often lack the funding needed to pay core facility user fees needed to collect preliminary data for grant applications or key experiments needed for publications, which reduces investigator competitiveness for future funding. In order to overcome this hurdle, INBRE programs serving 12 different states have developed voucher programs that support core facility access. Here we describe the structure of these programs and provide evidence from one state (Delaware) that these modest investments have a significant impact on research productivity as measured by downstream publications and grants, while also fostering the viability of research core facilities by building demand for core services. Across the country, INBRE-supported Core Voucher programs contribute significantly to the biomedical research enterprise fueling future research and innovation.
DNA labelling fluorescent dyes such as ethidium bromide have long been considered to be highly mutagenic during DNA replication. While recent studies have pushed back on this narrative, the intercalative nature of these dyes continues to raise the possibility that these dyes can induce mutations. The iconPCR instrument by n6tec uses fluorescent dyes to measure amplification in real time and to adjust cycling conditions. However, since this use of qPCR is preparative and not analytical, mutations introduced by fluorescent dyes would be propagated into the sequencing reaction. To address the impact of these dyes on downstream analyses, we have performed routine mutation calling as well as mutational signature analysis on samples amplified using the iconPCR in the presence of either SYBR or EvaGreen. Sequence analysis revealed very minimal impacts of dyes on the reactions, largely within the noise regimen with only subtle changes in mutation rates seen. Mutational signature analysis was unable to identify any key signatures assignable to the dyes in either substitutions or indel domains. The mutational impact of intercalating dyes during fluorescence-guided amplification is therefore minimal and can be disregarded in all but the most sensitive NGS applications.
This column highlights recently published articles that are of interest to the readership of this publication. We encourage ABRF members to forward information on articles they feel are important and useful to Clive Slaughter, AU-UGA Medical Partnership, 1425 Prince Avenue, Athens GA 30606. Tel; (706) 713-2216: Fax; (706) 713-2221: Email; cslaught@uga.edu or to any member of the editorial board. Article summaries reflect the reviewer's opinions and not necessarily those of the Association.
Glycation is an important post-translational modification (PTM) that has been linked to diabetes, cataract, Alzheimer’s, and Rheumatoid arthritis. This reaction occurs between a reducing sugar and a primary amine at the N-terminus of a protein or at a lysine side chain. Ultimately, this interaction can lead to advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that are associated with several disease complications. Glycation can occur during the manufacturing and storage of therapeutic proteins, including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), necessitating the characterization of this modification to ensure the safety and efficacy of therapeutic drug products. Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC) has been previously employed to characterize hydrophilic modifications. It can also be used to characterize glycated species, as the hydrophilic nature of the glycation product can lead to a characteristic shift in HILIC retention. This work focuses on deriving a retention coefficient that describes the extent of hydrophilicity imparted by glycation modification in HILIC using in vitro glycated peptide and protein samples. The HILIC retention coefficient can be used to predict the retention times of tryptic peptides with glycation modifications in complex, unknown protein samples, including immunoglobulins (IgGs).
This article presents the authors' perspectives on the origins and early impact of the Association of Biomolecular Facilities (ABRF) Core Administrators Network (CAN). Formed in 2010 amid the rapid expansion of core facilities across U.S. universities and medical centers, CAN addressed growing demand for guidance on compliant service pricing and cost-recovery practices. Through early leadership and targeted educational programs, CAN helped resolve policy and regulatory questions, raised awareness among federal agencies and institutions of the central role of core facilities in modern research, and advocated for sustained investment to preserve their effectiveness and efficiency. In partnership with ABRF, CAN drove membership growth, positioned ABRF as the national organization for core administrators, and catalyzed the creation of institutional sponsorships These foundational efforts established CAN as a national leader in core administration and strengthened the standing of core facilities as essential assets for research instututions.
