If you haven't found answer to your question, please contact the Single Cell Team

Please note: We cannot accept samples that have not been discussed in advance with our team (contact above).

To ensure you get the best from your planned experiment, please try to give our team as much notice as possible. We ask for at least a weeks notice in advance before submitting any samples to our team. This will help us schedule your experiment & ensure we have procured the required reagents & consumables to accommodate your request.

We accept samples on the following days:
Monday to Thursday between 10am to 4pm. In case of emergency samples, we can accept on Fridays up to 2pm, but will reject without a good-enough reason (surgery/ precious sample).

We ask for a notice of 30 minutes before you arrive with samples to ensure we are ready to load your sample as soon as possible to prevent further cell death/ stress. It is important to keep us updated about any changes that happen during the day of the experiment that may impact your scheduled time or number of samples submitted. If you are unsure, it is always better to send us an email to check.

If you are submitting samples from a department outside of the CRUK CI building, please inform the team before you arrive that you are planning to do so, helping us make sure one of our staff in available to take receipt of your samples.

Upon arrival please let reception staff know you have a sample to deliver to the Single Cell Team in the Genomics Core and we will come to pick up samples from you at the reception desk.

We accept samples for our single cell services from CRUK CI researchers and across departments at Cambridge University. If we have scope to accept samples outside of these groups as well as from other organisations, but require you contact us to check first to ensure planning/ costing. Please contact the Single Cell Team if you have any queries or wish to use our services & we'll be able to advise you if we can accommodate your request.

The submission process if done entirely online and may require a few different accounts to be set up, as this can take some time, we recommend you do it in advance. To be able to submit samples to CRUK CI Genomics Core you will need to:

1. Request a user account for the sequencing service which will allow you to upload a submission form around time of experiment.
2. Contact us to set up your grant code in PPMS. Sometimes it takes up to few weeks to get financial part sorted out so we recommend to send us details as soon as possible.
3. In rare cases, when the research group you belong to have never worked with us in the past (especially if your PI just joined the institute), we may need to set up a PPMS account (different to adding your individual grant code) and an FTP account. Please contact us to check if we have your PI's details in the system.
4. Fill in a submission form and upload it to your project. For help filling in the submission form please follow this guide.

Please inform our team with at least a weeks notice accommodate your experiment as we keep a small number of reagents in stock. However, larger experiments (requiring more reagents) need to be discussed and booked as soon as possible to give us enough time to place an order. Typically, 10x Genomics deliveries usually take around 1-2 weeks to arrive but some unexpected circumstances can always happen so please do get in touch as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

We also reserve the right to refuse accepting samples that were not agreed upon in advance or if our schedule is too busy to accommodate more samples in a certain time frame. Although the latter is very unlikely, we do have periods of intensified submissions, including before Christmas and at the end of financial year. If we ever feel that the quality of our service would suffer, it would be necessary to stop taking new bookings.

For example: I lost all my cells during processing, test subject didn't survive or cell line looked very unhealthy before delivery.

We understand that experiments don't always go according to plan, and sometimes submission won't be possible due to circumstances beyond your control. Mostly we can accommodate last minute changes (bringing samples later, more or less samples within reason), however please remember to inform us about complete cancellations as soon as it is possible, especially noting that reagents are being taken out of the freezer 30 minutes before planned arrival.

Unfortunately, we cannot let external users into our lab, so please stick to our core hours when a member of our lab will be able to process your samples for you (see When can I submit my samples?).

CRUK CI researchers who might need to run samples in the night or during the weekends can discuss such experiments with the Core Facility Head. Either come to room 026 or send a ticket to our helpdesk to explore this option.

If you have access to Chromium equipment and would like to submit your libraries for sequencing please refer to our NGS Submission guide.

This will depend on the chemistry you would like to use & the number of samples you are hoping to submit.

Please contact Single Cell Team & ask for a price card for up to date information on our prices for sequencing & single cell.

Please note: Sequencing is not included in the library preparation service and it will vary depending on the scale of the experiment (experimental design, number of samples, number of cells being captured, sequencing depth etc).
We recommend discussing this matter with your bioinformatician.

If you would like an indication on how much your experiment might cost for 10X library prep & sequencing please get in contact with the team & we'll put together a cost estimate for you based on your requirements (number of samples, chemistry, read depth etc.)