BVC facility

The BVC facility is a biosafety level II laboratory for customers who wish to conduct recombinant virus projects but may not have other access to a BSL-2 lab.
Applications
  • Recombinant virus production
  • Transduction of target cells
  • Fluorescent wide-field imaging for BSL-2 substances

In order to work in the BVC facility, you need to have an official permission from the BVC management that is obtained through registration and biosafety training. If you are planning to start your work in our facility, you need to take the BVC biosafety training and be registered as a BVC user. If you are part of STEMM program, you can choose whether you want to be registered as a BVC user or a STEMM user. New STEMM users also need to take the BVC biosafety training before starting their projects in our facility. All new users need to have previous experience in cell culture work. If you’re new to virus work we recommend to have someone from your group to help, train and guide you when you start your projects. BVC doesn’t offer training for the actual virus work nor do we provide protocols for virus particle production.

The biosafety training and registration fee is 120 €/person (UH customers), and the fee covers the waste management, customer support, facility and equipment maintenance for both customer groups. EVOS microscope users need to be registered and trained as well.

After registration you are free to use our facility for your projects!

As a BVC user the fee is 23€/h. This covers the most common cell culture plastics, materials, reagents, and protective accessories (gloves, sleeve covers, shoe covers etc). As a STEMM user you don’t pay for the hourly fee, but you need to provide your own materials and reagent (gloves, sleeve covers, cell culture plastics, media etc.). STEMM users also need to mark their reservations to our online calendar.

The BVC users also need to report their hours to InnoLims extranet. After use, mark in the hours you have worked in the facility. Log in with your UH email address and with the password given to you by the BVC management (written on your BVC user agreement).

If you are not registered as a user and would like to get the biosafety training or quick training to be able to use the EVOS microscope, please contact bvc-support@helsinki.fi.

Here you can find our updated Biosafety manual (2023) where you can find our safety policies and instruction in case of an emergency. After registration working hours can be reserved through BVC online calendar. Please contact our customer support for the calendar password.
    The facility instruments
    • Thermo Forma Series II Water Jacketed CO2 Incubators
    • Heraeus Multifuge 3S-R (tube and plate rotor)
    • Olympus CK40 bright field microscope
    • Labnet International Spectrafuge 24 D
    • Wealtec E-centrifuge
    • Hettich Universal 32 centrifuge
    • Bio-Rad TC20™ Automated Cell Counter
    • EVOS® FL Imaging System
    • Access to an ultracentrifuge and swing out rotor
    The materials covered by the user fee
    • Lab jackets (also for STEMM users)
    • Nitrile and latex gloves, sleeve and shoe covers, safety goggles, face masks
    • Most common cell culture plastics: 10 cm and 15 cm plates, 6-, 12- and 24-well plates, T25 and T75 flasks
    • Pipettes and pipette tips, serological pipettes
    • Syringes, 0.45 um filters, centrifuge tubes (15 ml, 50 ml), microcentrifuge tubes (1ml, 2 ml, 5 ml)
    • DMEM (Sigma), RPMI (Sigma), Pen/Strep, L-glut, FBS (South America, Serana), PBS, trypsin
    • Virkon, Ethanol, sterile MQ water (also for STEMM users)
    • Polybrene