Shared Resources

Associate Director for Shared Resources: Joshua Hamilton, PhD
Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology
Joshua.Hamilton@dartmouth.edu

Shared resources of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center have been developed where a perceived need exists for specialized equipment, services or centralized consultation. Shared Resources with specialized instrumentation, and the expertise to apply these resources to research, have become increasingly important in recent years.

Click on the name of a Shared Resource either in the image below or in the list that follows for more information.

The goal of the Cancer Center has been to develop a portfolio of Shared Resources to:

Provide easy and affordable access to technology that cannot be supported by individual labs

The cost of such instruments and services is usually prohibitive for individual laboratories or even for most individual departments. Thus, there is an economy of scale and justification for purchasing an expensive high-end or high-throughput instrument for shared use by a research community.

Provide the essential technical support for the operation and maintenance of specialized equipment

A professional staff can usually offer services on an instrument at a cost that is far less than that for an individual laboratory performing a similar analysis, even with access to the same instrument. The staff can be expertly trained to perform a particular service in the most efficient and cost-effective way, and can also analyze samples in batches in a well-ordered queue.

Provide centralized expert consultation

Due to the amount of time involved in the development of many of the associated techniques, it is not always practical for researchers who are presented with a new analytical challenge to develop the necessary expertise unless it becomes an ongoing part of their research. This can be circumvented by having the instrumentation and the necessary techniques that are required to use it readily available from a centralized source, allowing the researchers to gain their information in a timely manner and move on to the next research question.

Provide personnel essential to fulfill legal and regulatory compliance

Having a professional staff oversee instrumentation will allow routine maintenance and avoid potential problems with misuse or neglect by untrained personnel.

Provide the administrative coordination for successful operation of resources

One of the most important services a Shared Resource can offer is to provide the intellectual and technical resources that can assist the investigator in designing and conducting the proper experiment, preparing the appropriate samples for analysis, analyzing them in the most appropriate way, and assisting in correctly interpreting the results. This latter function is of even greater importance where consultation is the primary product of the resource.