The Stanford Neurosciences Institute and the School of Medicine together facilitate the efforts and productivity of a broad array of neuroscientists by providing core facilities and services. These staffed facilities allow researchers to access tools, techniques and expertise that would be costly or impractical to replicate in individual laboratories. The Neuroscience Cores are supported in part by the NIH through a NINDS P30 Center Core Grant (Principal Investigator Gary Steinberg and Co-Principal Investigator Mehrdad Shamloo).

The research core facilities are an integral part of the neuroscience research effort at the Stanford School of Medicine as well as university-wide, and play a vital role in the Neurosciences mission at Stanford to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into novel therapeutic approaches that improve the quality of life for patients with disorders of the brain and spinal cord. The cores provide a unique platform for Stanford faculty, enabling them, through collaboration, to make genetic constructs and viral product (GVVC) for genetic manipulation and functional validation in the whole system (SBFNL) followed by post mortem and in life imaging (NMS).  

Since inception, the core service centers have supported over 71 different laboratories with over 20,000 hours of services with the majority of users from neuroscience labs funded by the NIH. Along with our mission, we have continued to support NINDS funded faculty with studies ranging from virus production to imaging and behavioral and functional validation

The cores’ unique capabilities have also attracted many users from different institutions regionally and nationally, including the University of California, San Diego, the Gladstone Institute, and MIT. Going forward, we believe we will be a national resource for all NINDS-funded faculty in need of viral constructs and neuro-pharmacological and imaging services.