To cure today’s decline of the drug discovery industry efficiency, a radical change seems finally to be occurring. Alternative biological models to standard cell cultures and rodents started proving their potential to revolutionize the field. While 3-dimensional (3D) cell cultures are progressively replacing standard 2D formats in different applications, small model organisms, such as the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans, are gaining increasing attention as valid alternatives to mice in several drug screening contexts. Indeed, a widespread adoption of C. elegans in pharmaceutical research could significantly lower both costs and delays of preclinical drug development, reduce mice testing and increase the predictivity of drug toxicity/efficacy tests. Unfortunately, however, the protocols for culture and study of C. elegans still mainly rely today on manual techniques, largely lacking the reproducibility and throughput requirements required by large-scale drug screening applications. Aiming to solve this issue, this project successfully managed to achieve the technical proof-of-concept of a first automated platform for C. elegans culture, analysis and drug testing. In particular, the project focused on the integration of robotic components for the automation of C. elegans culture and imaging processes into a dedicated platform. This technology is expected to pave the way for the widespread use of C. elegans for the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing within the drug discovery industry.
