Welcome to the Canadian Phycological Culture Centre - CPCC (formerly known as the University of Toronto Culture Collection of Algae and Cyanobacteria - UTCC). As Canada's national service collection of freshwater algae and cyanobacteria the collection maintains around 500 strains of algae and cyanobacteria. It was founded in 1987 and since then has provided research quality cultures and related services to over 900 users in educational institutions, government and commercial laboratories in 30 countries.
The facility has recently moved to the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo from its former location at University of Toronto, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. The CPCC is financially supported partly by user fees and by a Major Resources Support (MRS) grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC), which has provided funding for the facility since 1988. The support of the above organizations is gratefully acknowledged.
Shipping cultures in winter
Shipping delays may occur over the coming winter months
Online Seminar on cell culture - controlling contamination
Seminars on controlling contamination in cultures: available in Sept and Oct 2009 at Corning Inc. Sponsored by ATCC and the Society for In Vitro Biology. The seminars are intended for animal culture but may be useful for algal culture as well. See
http://www.corning.com/lifesciences/us_canada/en/technical_resources/online_training.aspx
The CPCC website is operational again and we can now accept orders online
Thanks for your patience in waiting for our website to be back online. The data for the site were temporarily lost due to a server crash at University of Toronto. With the help of Alex Dvornyak and Seagate we have been fortunate to recover the entire website and are now in the process of having the site moved to University of Waterloo, as well as updating and modifying the content.
Fee increases at CPCC
Our fee structure has changed as of April 1, 2009 and the following charges now apply:
Announcements re CPCC
New location for CPCC (formerly UTCC)
The CPCC was relocated from the University of Toronto to the University of Waterloo in August 2008. We have hired a new Technical Curator, Heather Roshon to work with Judy Acreman, who is now serving as Manager of the CPCC on a part time basis. We are in a transition phase but will do our best to serve you as promptly as possible. Please allow 8-10 business days from the time we receive your order until the cultures are shipped. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
History of the UTCC and CPCC
The CPCC which was formerly known as UTCC becomes 22 years old in 2009. See the Timeline for some of the milestones along the way.
