Our Core Facilities
The Alberta Centre for Advanced Diagnostics (ACAD) is a fully integrated BLS2 ecosystem containing all of the physical infrastructure and partnerships needed to prototype and validate new diagnostic tools and connect them with Alberta’s end-users.
The core facilities in ACAD include: Calgary Metabolomics Research Facility, Diagnostic Prototyping Facility, Diagnostic Evaluation Facility (coming soon), and the Lewis Research Group. The core ACAD programs include: Alberta Precision Exchange (APEX), APEX Access Program and ResistanceDB. The Alberta Diagnostic Ecosystem Platform for Translation is an affiliated program of ACAD. Learn more about our core facilities, core programs and affiliated program:
The CMRF is a $4.5 million facility designed specifically for investigating the metabolism of infectious diseases. This facility includes an integrated Biosafety Level 2 microbiology laboratory and mass spectrometry lab to facilitate the research and development of new diagnostic devices and analytical strategies. The CMRF’s dedicated staff provide expertise in high throughput metabolomic and proteomic analyses of a wide variety of complex biological samples.
Diagnostic Evaluation Facility (DEF) - COMING SOON - Preclinical performance testing and early end-user feedback has a profound impact on which tools gain market share. Getting this feedback is difficult for infectious disease projects, where sample access and biosafety constraints complicate pre-clinical trials. To address this, ACAD is building a DEF, a 78m2 BSL-2 facility at the Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL)/UCalgary physical interface. This co-location will allow projects to operate under UCalgary’s ethics, biosafety, and IP umbrella, while maintaining isolate samples in the custody of APL. This arrangement circumvents many privacy, legal, and IP challenges and provides an efficient mechanism for enabling head-to-head performance trials against established technologies. Innovations evaluated in the DEF will have a significant competitive edge arising from our expert end-user feedback. Moreover, our partnership with provincial testing providers creates a path for successful tools to be deployed throughout Alberta.
Diagnostic Prototyping Facility (DPF) - The DPF is an extensively equipped bioengineering fabrication facility (housing 3D printing, CNC milling, laser cutting, and electronics prototyping) built adjacent to two human pathogen labs (one microbial, the other viral). The large suite of instruments enables rapid and iterative prototyping coupled with on-site performance testing in human pathogen-certified biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) project spaces. Few Alberta labs meet this requirement. The DPF will dramatically shorten R&D timelines by co-localizing all of the resources needed to prototype, test, and refine pathogen diagnostic platforms in one setting. ACAD’s Diagnostic Prototyping Facility (DPF) will contribute significant fabrication capacity in Alberta’s diagnostic innovation ecosystem and will directly accelerate the commercialization of the diagnostic devices, tools, and consumables required for medical diagnostic applications.
Lewis Research Group (LRG) harnesses state-of-the-art analytical technology to unravel the complex host-pathogen dynamics that occur during human infections. The LRG facility includes an integrated microbiology laboratory, engineering facility and mass spectrometry lab to facilitate research and development of new diagnostic devices
