ARG - user guidelines

The Autoradiography Core Facility (ARG) is available for researchers at the Karolinska Institutet at subsidized prices. For external or corporate users: ARG CF can offer services without a commissioned/contract research or collaborative research agreement, in accordance with the Swedish governmental ordinance (2022:1378) on fees for research infrastructure.

Our services are commonly used in drug or PET tracer development, for example in the preclinical evaluation of radioligands for misfolded proteins, such as tau and alpha-synuclein, or in theranostic tracer development projects.

ARG CF gives its users the opportunity to choose whether to:

  • Order a full service
  • Request a consultation to get assistance with planning and experimental design/analysis
  • Book training and time with the instrument/resource to run experiments on their own

New user

If you are interested in performing a radioligand binding study at the autoradiography facility, please send an email to the unit head Vasco Sousa (vasco.sousa@ki.se). After receiving your request, we will contact you to schedule a meeting to discuss the project.

Training information

A training/introduction with each instrument is required for all first-time users. 

Please note

Users booking our instruments (except the cryostat) must be licensed by the Karolinska University Hospital radiation safety officer to work with radioisotopes.

The training open radioactive sources is mandatory and also covers personnel who may be present in premises during ongoing activities involving radiation but who do not themselves handle equipment/radiation sources, as well as personnel with responsibility for personnel within the activities concerned. Medical Radiation Physics and Nuclear Medicine is responsible for radiation safety training for all personnel involved in activities involving radiation at the hospital. The training should be repeated within five years.

For those holding a license, radiation safety training must have been completed wirhin five years to the date of use/experimentation for all users.

Training and education in image processing and data analyses can be done together with Autoradiography Core Facility (ARG) at request and coverage of incurred costs. Please contact us to discussion your needs and what support you need.

Booking iLab and user fees

For pricing, requests and bookings please contact us or log into our iLab booking system, the core facility management system used at KI.

All ARG CF users need to register for an iLab account before booking our services or using our instruments.

Acknowledging contributions to scientific publications

Studies to which the ARG CF staff has contributed with the planning, method optimization, execution and data analysis; or where otherwise the criteria listed in the Vancouver recommendations for defining co-authorship are fulfilled, shall credit the relevant contributions of our staff accordingly.

Studies carried out at our facility, or where our facility staff has contributed but not fulfilled the Vancouver recommendations for authorship, shall be credited in the acknowledgements section of the publication, with e.g. the following:

“The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the autoradiography core facility, financed by the infrastructure board at Karolinska Institutet for providing [specify the service or resources used]."