Instituto de Medicina Tropical Alexander von Humboldt - UPCH

The Institute www.upch.edu.pe/tropicales  is located at the Hospital Nacional Cayetano Heredia, the Teaching Hospital for the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia www.upch.edu.pe.  It shares the locale and installations of the Departamento de Enfermedades Transmisibles y Dermatológicas of the Hospital, which has been assigned a 10,000 m2 plot, where a series of buildings have been erected: the main one (1440 m2) houses the hospitalization ward (36 patients, 670 m2), library, social service and some offices (330 m2), reception and outpatient offices (150 m2), and laboratories (580 m2 in two stories). 

There is also an outpatient section for dermatology and sexually transmitted diseases in a separate construction (230 m2), an animal house for infected animals, with surgical rooms (330 m2), a classroom-auditorium (50 m2) and a new section for field work and Leishmaniasis (200 m2).

NOTE:  Several changes have been made since the above

Description:
- The Gorgas-Patrucco www.gorgas.org  building, about 60 m2, with additional computers, projectors, VHS system for postgraduate instruction and training, was added (Foto).

- More construction (about 150 m2) was added in the second floor, with desks for research associates, an
area for the IMT AvH computer servers and Postmaster, the original headquarters of the Hispano American
Health Link (EHAS) www.ehas.org  rural telemedicine program, 2 outpatient consultation rooms for patients in research protocols, and the IMT AvH cryobank facility.

- The building originally devoted to be an animal house has suffered changes; several of the animal rooms have been devoted to other needs: a malaria laboratory, a distilled, deionized and Pyrodistilled water production unit, and a postgraduate lecture room.

The laboratories are distributed by disciplines: http://www.upch.edu.pe/TROPICALES/qhacemos/contenido/servicios.htm
intestinal parasitology, experimental microbiology, tissue and cell culture, cell biology and biochemistry, mycology, nutrition, immunology, clinical microbiology, molecular biology, entomology, field work, malaria and Leishmania.  The average size of the laboratories is 35 m2 each.  There is a shared Molecular Biology-PCR room where very specialized equipment is held (see below).

Equipment:

The facilities and equipment necessary to perform laboratory work are available within the IMT AvH,
distributed among the different laboratories. Special biosafety enclosures have been constructed in the
Microbiology (for Mycobacteria and other pathogens) and the Mycology laboratories. They contain Baker
laminar flow hoods with no air recirculation; all air is exhausted to the exterior after HEPA filtration.

The Molecular Biology-PCR facility deserves special mention: there is a fully equipped room, with a
capillary electrophoresis DNA sequence analyzer (ABI 3100 Avant, 4 capilars), one Real Time PCR iCycler and 4 PCR thermocyclers, plus adjunct imaging and computer  facilities. Other major equipment include a BD
FACScalibur (4 colors detection plus cell sorter), Data image analyzer from Bio Rad with chemoluminescence detection, 1 L2-75B Beckman Ultracentrifuge, 4 high-speed refrigerated centrifuges (Damon/IEC and Sorvall), 1 BioRad MicroELISA Reader, cell harvester coupled to a scintillation counter; 1 Beckman HPLC with a 2-pump gradient former, a complete equipment set for chromatography purification (fraction collector, UV/Vis detection module, peristaltic pump) inside a large cold cabinet, 4 Water-jacketed CO2 Incubators;  6 Laminar Flow Cabinets; different horizontal and vertical electrophoresis systems for nucleic acids, proteins, Western blot and isoelectrofocusing; Hybaid hybridization oven, 1 electroporator; 9 binocular microscopes; 5 stereoscopic microscopes; 3 inverted microscopes; water system (one glass distiller; water deionizer; Pasteur Institute Pyrodistillator (quartz, high-temperature);

Other equipment includes several microcentrifuges (Eppendorff type), 1 Mettler electric analytic
balance, 3 Sartorius electric Top loading balance; Corning pH Meters; New Brunswick Gyrotory water-bath
shakers. 

Concerning cryobanking, we have 4 deep freezers (-70 °C), 3 liquid nitrogen tanks (2000 samples each);
several -20 °C freezers and  regular refrigerators.

In 2005 we are purchasing an ELISPOT apparatus for the immunology lab.  In 2006 we will purchase a
Bioanalyzer apparatus for genotyping.

Computing :

The UPCH has available Windows NT and Linux servers with Ethernet 10/100/1000 BaseT design network
supporting  protocols TCP/IP and NETBeui, with an optic fibre backbone at 1000 Mbps, using switching of
10/100 Mbps Hubs at local workgroups with 800 connection points with an Internet IP class C
(200.10.88.xxx), connected with the southern campus through a frame-relay dedicated connection. 70 Pentium
based workstations are available in classrooms in the two campuses. The main services provided are:
Electronic mail, world wide web, printing services (laser, colour jet, etc.), image processing services,
database and information systems, software development, statistical processing and geographic
information system. 

Currently, the recently incorporated bioinformatics laboratory comprises a dual Pentium pro CPU based
workstation running under Linux Red Hat 7.0 - Windows 98, with ultra fast SCSII interface, one Pentium III
and one Pentiums II workstations running under LINUX - Windows 98. Printer and internet accession through a
100Mps network are also available. Installed software includes GROMOS 96 (received as a donation from Dr.
Van Gunsteren) and Sculpt (received as a donation from ) for molecular modeling, DNASIS for sequence
analysis. Several statistical analysis software: SPLUS 2000, STATA v.7.0, SPSS v.10, SAS v.7.0, R; and
mathematical software: Mathematica v.4.1 and Mathcad v.6.0. Statistical genetics software for genetic
association and linkage analysis: GAS, SIBPAIR