Project description
Automating fish egg sorting to streamline biomedical innovation
A small tropical fish in the minnow family, the zebrafish has made a large impact on biomedical research. It has almost all the genes humans do and produces hundreds of offspring weekly. The eggs remain transparent into the early larval stage, making non-invasive microscopic observation possible. Rapid development means hypotheses can be tested in minimal time. In stark contrast with the ease and speed with which eggs are produced and grown, manual sorting and inspection of thousands of eggs a day has been a serious bottleneck. EggSorter is developing a marketing and commercialisation plan for an automated system to make that faster, easier, and more fruitful to facilitate discovery and innovation in numerous fields.
Objective
This project aims at bringing to the market a device that combines innovative micro-engineering design and machine learning methods to automatically inspect and sort miniature biological entities, in particular the egg of zebrafish Danio rerio, which is a common model for studies in genetics, development biology or toxicology. This EggSorter device will have a direct impact in research groups at universities and in the industry that are intensively using such organism in their studies, and that have to invest a large amount of resources for tedious tasks such as the manual sorting of thousands of egg cells every day, or the continuous inspection of these organisms for several hours or days. During this project, we will collaborate with end-users to estimate the technology readiness level of the device for the identified markets, using prototypes that were developed during the recently finished FET ASSISIbf project. In conjunction with the assessment of this technology, we will create a business plan that will include a study of the market opportunities and possible strategies for industrialization and commercialization of the device. Finally, we will create a roadmap for the initialization of a spin-off, which goal will be to bring to the market a product that will not only simplify the work of hundreds of researchers around the world, but also allow to identify novel features related to the development of embryo inside egg cells and new drug discoveries, which will have a high impact on the society in the future.
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgenetics
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineembryology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinetoxicology
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
1015 Lausanne
Switzerland