I-Corps: A microfluidic technology for drug testing on small nematodes

I-Corps：一种用于小型线虫药物测试的微流体技术

• 批准号: 1849943
• 负责人: Siva Vanapalli
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Texas Tech University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-15 至 2019-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1849943&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; microfluidic; technology; drug; testing

The broad impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is an innovative high throughput technology for screening drugs in small animals including the popular model organism C. elegans, a millimeter-sized nematode. Age is a significant risk factor for a variety of diseases including cancer, cardiovascular ailments and neurodegenerative disorders. It is projected that by 2030, 20% of the US population will be 65 years or older indicating that with the growing aging population the incidence of these diseases is expected to rise. Likewise, soil-transmitted helminthic infections are prevalent worldwide and there is increasing evidence that parasitic nematodes are becoming resistant to available drugs. C. elegans is a low-cost and high throughput animal model for identifying drug candidates for age-related diseases and parasitic infections. The I-Corps project has the potential to address current bottlenecks in conducting high throughput drug assays in the C. elegans model, thereby paving the path for a drug discovery pipeline. The impact of this project is on alleviating the socio-economic burden associated with age-associated diseases and parasitic infections.This I-Corps project seeks to develop a microfluidics-based technology for automated drug testing on small nematodes. Current approaches to drug testing on C. elegans involve tedious steps of manual picking and transferring animals cultured on agar plates and moreover do not allow flexible control of culture environment. The proposed technology builds on basic principles of microscale flows, locomotion of active swimmers and crawlers, and low-cost wide-field imaging. Novel features of the technology for drug testing include an optimized microfluidic pillar arena that forms a habitat for growing animals, with unprecedented control over reagent delivery and culture environment. The low-cost wide-field imaging allows facile video recording of animal response to different drugs. The proposed innovation will markedly advance the throughput of in vivo drug and toxicity assays in an established, high throughput and low-cost animal model.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目的广泛影响/商业潜力是一种创新的高通量技术，用于筛选小动物中的药物，包括流行模型有机体C.秀丽隐杆线虫（毫米大小）。年龄是多种疾病的重要危险因素，包括癌症，心血管疾病和神经退行性疾病。预计到2030年，美国20％的人口将达到65岁或以上，这表明随着年龄较大的人群的增长，这些疾病的发生率预计将上升。同样，全世界都普遍存在土壤传播的蠕虫感染，并且有越来越多的证据表明寄生虫正在对可用药物有抵抗力。秀丽隐杆线虫是一种低成本和高吞吐性动物模型，用于鉴定与年龄有关的疾病和寄生虫感染的候选药物。 I-Corps项目有可能解决秀丽隐杆线虫模型中高通量药物测定时的当前瓶颈，从而为药物发现管道铺平了道路。该项目的影响是减轻与年龄相关疾病和寄生虫感染相关的社会经济负担。该I-Corps项目旨在开发一种基于微流体的技术，用于针对小型Nematodes的自动化药物测试。当前对秀丽隐杆线虫进行药物测试的方法涉及手动采摘和转移在琼脂板上培养的动物的步骤，而且不允许灵活控制培养环境。拟议的技术建立在微观流动的基本原理，活跃的游泳者和爬行者的运动以及低成本宽视野成像的基础上。药物测试技术的新特征包括一个优化的微流体支柱竞技场，构成了生长动物的栖息地，并对试剂递送和培养环境进行了前所未有的控制。低成本的宽场成像允许轻松记录动物对不同药物的反应。拟议的创新将在既定，高吞吐和低成本的动物模型中显着提高体内药物和毒性测定法的吞吐量。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来评估的支持。