Dr. Loyda Meléndez Lab

Laboratory
Dr. Wojna's laboratory facilitie consists of 300 sq. ft. It is a biosafety level-2 laboratory located on the third floor of the Biomedical Building at the Univesity of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. These laboratories are immediately adjacent to the other NeuroAIDS research laboratories to facilitate sharing of equipment and optimize communications. They are in close proximity to the Clinical Research Center.

Clinical
Recruitment will be performed at primary HIV clinics after the director's support for patient screening and evaluation. All patients' evaluations and procedures will be at the UPR MSC Clinical Research Clinic (CRC). The CRC consists of 14,000 sq. ft space, 8 examination rooms, 3 nursing stations, 2 procedure rooms, 2 infusion areas, 2 isolation rooms, core laboratory, record room, pharmacy, and administrative areas. The new Informatics Core will be available for database support, web page capabilities, and video conferences.

Computer
There are 2 Dell Intel Pentium 4 1 GHZ X processor/256 MB RAM, HP Laserjet 4100N printer. Both are equipped with network capabilities, software for data statistical analysis, graphics, and word processing.

Office
Dr. Wojna's office is 120 sq. ft and is located at the third floor of the Biomedical Building. There is secretarial and administrative support. The office is equipped with telephone and internet service. Fax machines and photocopies are available on a shared basis. The office is located in close proximity to the laboratory.

Other
Neuropsychological Laboratory has 200 sq. ft divided into two testing rooms. It provides the latest versions of psychological and neuropsychological tests. This laboratory is also equipped with an under optic scan, photocopy facilities, two phone extensions, a computer with Internet access and printer, and a library.

Major Equipment
Dr. Wojna's laboratory is fully equipped with laminar flow hood, ultra-low freezer, small refrigerator/freezer, microcentrifuge, safety cabinets, vortex, hot plate and stirring, ELISA Washer and Reader, electronic balance, PH meter, benchtop sterilizer, autoclave, and nitrogen liquid storage facility.
Dr. Wojna's laboratory is in close proximity to other laboratories at the Neuro-AIDS SNRP, Drs. Loyda Melendez and Carlos Luciano. Dr. Melendez has all the necessary equipment for the culture of monocytes and viruses including HIV and Dr. Luciano has all the equipment related to the analsysis of skin nerve fibers. The main building of the UPR MSC has common equipment rooms at the Physiology Department (6th floor of main building) These rooms provide the use of VersaDoc System (BioRad), Beckman Ultra Centrifuges, Sartorious microbalance, Ultra-pure water facilities and ice-maker machine. In addition, also at the Physiology Department, there is a core facility, Microscopy Image Center, initially developed by the Research Center for Minority Institutions and now under the supervision of the physiology faculty. This core facility consists of Shimadzu spectrofluorometer, AMICO Bowman series 2 spectronic unicam, Zeiss Confocal Microscope, Zeiss Axioscope Microscope, Zeiss Axiovert Microscope, Xillix Microimager Video Camera, Dage Video Camera, Nikon Automatic Camera, Leica Cryostat, and vibratome.