FLAMMES · On-chip metasurface-based neuroimaging platform toward high-throughput drug screening in freely behaving animal
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-04-01 → 2023-03-31
- EU contribution
- €183,473
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
On-chip metasurface-based neuroimaging platform toward high-throughput drug screening in freely behaving animal
Neurological and psychiatric disorders are clinical areas where the probability of novel drugs discovery, and indeed effectiveness, is among the lowest in the field of pharmacological development over last decades. A strategy for monitoring both the whole-brain dynamics and the behavior of zebrafish larvae can help to map both the actual interaction mechanisms between the neuronal activities and the behavior, as well as the impact of different neuro-specific drug on their behaviors. Goal of this project is to develop a “miniaturized microscope” (FLAMMES) capable of producing whole-brain imaging of zebrafish larvae and compatible with behavioral studies, such to open to the possibility of automatically processing and evaluating, at the same time, the effects of many compounds on their biological activities in a large number of organisms. The key enabling technology of this platform is the integration of state-of the-art CMOS imaging sensors with metasurfaces, flat optical components with multiplexing and tunable properties.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
A central goal of modern neuroscience is to correlate neurological conditions, external stimuli and behavior with the activity and location of individual neuron within a large brain volume. Thus, simultaneous recording of brain activity and organism behavior are fundamental to characterize circuit alterations underlying neurological disorders and to assess potential attenuation strategies. Thanks to the high degree of morphological, genetic and behavioral resemblance with humans, zebrafish is becoming a prominent model for studying neurological disorders and screening of neurospecific compounds. Owing to reduced light scattering, small size and 3R-principle compatibility of the zebrafish larvae, parallel whole-brain neuroimaging of multiple zebrafish might pave the way of in vivo drug discovery. Recent studies report technological breakthroughs that enable monitoring of zebrafish whole brain activity with cellular resolution. Although widely used for functional imaging, larval zebrafish remains limited to manual, extremely challenging and low-throughput screening.Here, I propose to integrate my solid background in biophysics and micro-nano optics engineering with new skills I will build at the Host Institution and Secondment for the project success. Goal of this project is to enable optical whole-brain imaging of multiple zebrafish larvae (Danio Rerio) freely behaving. First, I will demonstrate zebrafish larva neuroimaging with a novel metasurface-based optical sectioning illumination (Aim 1). Second, I will demonstrate selective plane on-chip detection synchronized with the excitation plane (Aim 2). Finally, I will prove potential parallel larvae on-chip microscopy (Aim 3). The proposed neuroimaging concept is a flexible approach to perform high-throughput drug screening based on recordings of the brain activity and characterization of the behavior outcome. Collectively, this study will provide a platform that contribute bridging the gap from bench-to-bedside.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA · PadovaCoordinatorItaly
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union