Descripción del proyecto
Integración de experimentos de biología celular en una caja
Los resultados de los experimentos de biología celular son inherentemente ruidosos debido a la variabilidad intercelular de los procesos biológicos. Para abordar este problema, el equipo del proyecto CellsBox, financiado con fondos europeos, desarrollará una unidad integrada de cultivo celular y obtención de imágenes que proporcione información a nivel de célula única. La idea es ofrecer un método sistemático y reproducible para realizar experimentos de biología celular que pueda proporcionar información en tiempo real. El sistema automatizado CellsBox también podrá incorporar tecnologías de inteligencia artificial y aprendizaje profundo en el análisis, lo que mejorará aún más los tipos de experimentos que se pueden realizar. La puesta en práctica de esta tecnología revolucionaria ayudará a la investigación celular a un nivel sin parangón.
Objetivo
"Based on research from ERC CoG HydroSync where we developed both hardware and software approaches to cell imaging, we are in the position to develop translationally a cell culture and imaging unit, with integrated modular hardware and analysis software allowing automated robust performance. This promises to not just significantly bring down the costs for a broad spectrum of cell biology and single cell imaging experiments. It will also make these experiments more reproducible, systematic and easily accessible in standardised fashion. Perhaps most important of all, by designing in an integrated (whilst modular architecture) system all the components of the experiment (optics, mechanics, cell environment and fluids control, cell sample chambers, analysis), we make it possible to rapidly feedback information on the state of the sample into actions by any of the other modules, thus allowing a new space of experimental design. This automation in running the experimental stage of cell biology, microbiology, infectious disease models, early embryo developmental work, etc (i.e. any of the many situations where one aims to follow the properties of individual cells) also aligns to the current revolution triggered by machine and deep learning approaches. We can imagine a day when integrated experimental ""CellsBoxes"" perform, in a hypothesis-driven optimised and tireless fashion, a battery of experiments that today would simply be inconceivable. This project addresses one of the experimental bottlenecks that still make too much of biological and medical research subject to bias and poor reproducibility, and change the nature of point-of-care cell tissue analysis. It will be disruptive in the current landscape of optical cell imaging, a market > $1bn globally."
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantInstitución de acogida
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Reino Unido