American University of Beirut

​​​​Microarray Facility

Our Microarray facility is located on the fourth floor of the DTS building and features 2 Affymetrix Fluidics Stations 450, a GeneChip Scanner 3000 and a GeneChip Hybridization oven 645. We operate on a fee for service charge. We have both a clinical arm and a research arm.

Clinical Applications

Microarrays can be used for multiple cytogenetic applications such as Copy Number Variation (CNV) in cancer and detection of microduplications and microdeletions not visible by routine karyotype or FISH. We also do SNP genotyping. The following arrays are used for clinical studies:

• (a) GeneChip CytoScan HD Array (oligo based and SNP microarray)
• (b) GeneChip Human Mapping 250K Nsp Array

Research Applications

Other than the two uses listed above, we offer analysis of RNA expression of experimental samples under different conditions such as: tumor versus normal tissue, one tissue versus another, treated versus untreated, and responsive versus unresponsive to therapy. For these applications the following chips are used:

• (c) GeneChip Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0
• (a), (b), and (c) are routinely available
• (d) Mouse expression microarrays are also available
• (e) GeneChip DMET PLUS arrays are especially designed for analysis of drug metabolic pathways. More information about these chips is available upon request
• (f) ChIP-on-Chip (using Chromatin IP) microarray can be used for epigenetic studies such as enriching and identifying DNA sequences bound by regulatory proteins, as well as identifying sites of histone and DNA modification (more information available upon request)
• (g) miRNA 4.0: microRNA coverage for 203 organisms allowing research into regulatory stem cell pathways and cancers (more information available upon request)
• (d), (e) (f) and (g) are available after special consultation