Dr. Ken Muneoka leads the Regenerative Medicine Research Group. His office is on the first floor of the Veterinary Research Building (VRB).
The Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology (VTPP) main office is located on the third floor of the neighboring VIDI building.
Academic & Research Support
- DARPA – Restorative Injury Repair Program W911NF-06-1-0161 ($16,726,526)
- NIH National Institute of Child Health & Human Development –
- R01 HD043277 ($1,334,520)
- P01 HD022610 ($1,334,520)
- 5U13HD061150
- US Army Research Center – DURIP Equipment Grant ($150,000)
- US Army Research Office – W911NF-09-1-0305 ($6,246,794)
Scientific Environment
The scientific environment at Texas A&M University is excellent for regeneration studies. The research lab is configured for efficiency and is adequate for about 10 lab personnel. The VRB has general facilities supported by the department that are routinely used, including ice machines, glassware washers, autoclave, liquid nitrogen storage tanks, walk-in cold room, darkrooms, and high-speed plus ultra-centrifuge.
Numerous core facilities available on the Texas A&M campus include an imaging facility, sequencing and bioinformatics facility, cell sorting facility, NMR spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry facilities. The Texas A&M Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM) is a full-service transgenic and knockout facility with state-of-the-art equipment and expertise. All animal work is carried out at TIGM, which is located approximately 100 yards from the VRB.
The Muneoka Lab has a dedicated animal room and two adjoining procedure labs (~400 sq. ft.) where amputation/surgeries are carried out. One of the procedure rooms houses a dedicated microCT (Scanco viva 40) that is used routinely for longitudinal imaging of the regeneration process. MicroCT image data can be accessed from the lab at any time, and all data are stored on tape drives.
Animals
Animals are housed at TIGM, which is an American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (ALAAC) approved facility. All vertebrate animal studies are approved by the Texas A&M Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), which meets all federal requirements, as defined in the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the Public Health Service Policy on the Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Laboratory
The research lab (~2000 sq ft) is housed on the third floor of the VRB and consists of two standard labs with a cell culture facility in between and a separate imaging room across the hall. Each lab has four benches and two small offices. One of the small offices is dedicated to histological preparation (embedding and sectioning), where three can work at any time. The imaging room houses multiple microscopes, and multiple people can work simultaneously. The lab space is configured to minimize traffic between related stations. All lab personnel have desks associated with the lab space.
Major Equipment
Our laboratory space is fully equipped with eight desk/bench units, a microscopy room, and a cell culture facility.
The microscopy room houses a number of microscopes, including a virtual imaging system (Olympus VS120), a laser micro-dissection system (Olympus Cellcut), a deconvolution fluorescence microscope (Olympus BX61TF), and a compound light microscope (Olympus). All scopes are equipped with high-resolution imaging systems.
The cell culture facility tissue houses a six-foot biosafety cabinet, two incubators, an inverted microscope with a high-resolution imaging system (Zeiss), an automated cell counter, a refrigerator, a centrifuge, and a 10-color flow cytometer (Beckman Coulter).
Major laboratory equipment includes a bioanalyzer (Agilent), microplate reader (Polarstar Omega), a real-time PCR machine (Eppendorf), 2 PRC machines, automated tissue processor (Leica), paraffin embedding station, glass needle puller, ultralow temperature freezer, multiple refrigerators and freezers, cryostat (Leica), two automated paraffin microtome (Leica), autoclave, gel imager, three liquid nitrogen storage tanks, and ultra-pure water system.
Equipment in the animal procedure rooms at TIGM includes a dedicated MicroCT scanner (Scanco VivaCT40), a dedicated micro-ultrasound imaging unit (Visualsonics Vivo770), a Faxitron for DXA analyses, a fluorescence dissection microscope with a high-resolution imaging system (Zeiss Lumar V12), a rodent hyperbaric chamber (Reimer B-11), three mobile isoflurane vaporizers, and multiple dissection microscopes.
Computers
The lab has multiple computers associated with lab equipment that are dedicated to the collection and analysis of data. Major equipment includes microscopes, microCT, micro-ultrasound, Faxitron, laser micro-dissection, and flow cytometer. All members of the Muneoka lab have dedicated computers for general use, and there are two common-use two computers dedicated to image analyses. All computers are equipped with MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Acrobat, Endnote, BoneJ, and GraphPad.