Columbia University Medical Center HICCC Radiation Research Core Facility

The Radiation Research Core Facility, located within and maintained by the Center for Radiological Research, provides a comprehensive irradiation service. The facility provides the capability to expose small animals, mammalian cells in culture, microorganisms and macromolecules to gamma-rays, x-rays and 254 nm UV light.

Research goals are diverse and include such tasks as creating double strand breaks or bulky lesions in DNA, irradiating mice before injection of cells to test tumorigenicity, creating transformed cells, preparing feeder layers for tissue culture, irradiating mice specifically in their eyes to analyze cataractogenesis, and measuring radiosensitivity of yeast, mouse, hamster or human cells. Arrangements can also be made to fabricate custom-designed shielding to expose animals only at specific anatomical sites.

The Facility currently has five irradiators:

• a high-dose-rate Gammacell 220 Cobalt Unit, with a dose rate of 11.5 Gy/min. for microorganisms such as yeast, macromolecules;
• an Atomic Energy of Canada Gammacell 40 Cesium Unit with a dose rate of 1 Gy/min as a low dose irradiator for small animals and mammalian cells in culture;
• the X-RAD 320 Biological Irradiator is a self contained X-ray system with operating energies up to 320 keV, useful for irradiating only select regions of animals when coupled with custom shielding, and also mammalian cells in culture;
• a UV light box emitting 254 nm light, for microorganisms and mammalian cells in culture.
• The SARRP 200 combined X-ray/CT imaging machine.