Objective
The main objective of the proposal is to develop a new easy-to-use tool for in-vitro screening of neurotoxic agents, based on changes/disappearance of electrophysiological activity in acute brain slices and organotypic slice cultures as a consequence of their exposure to neurotoxic agents. The proposal will take advantage of silicon technology by developing a micromachined multi-electrode array to be functionally coupled to brain slices and organotypic slice cultures. Thus allowing multi-site measurements repeatable in time.
The ease of use of the new tool should rely on the design of an optimised measurement micro-chamber for acute brain slices and organotypic brain slices. The core of the microchambe1 will be the array of micro-electrode on which biological samples will lay. This recording /stimulating array will form the bottom of the micro-chamber. The micro-chamber should guarantee the best possible approximation to physiological conditions (Cf. "Central Nervous System Slice Preparations", 3rd Int. Conf., June 1994, J. of Neurosci. Methods, 59, 1, 1995).
Appropriate software / hardware tools will be developed to optimise multi-site recording/stimulation of the electrophysiological signals and their processing in order to "translate" them into a highly reproducible neurotoxicology screening test. The development and use of the new array - based micro-chamber will be paralleled during the proposal by histological, biochemical and standard electrophysiology tests.
Measurable objectives to be achieved in the design of the chambers are:
1) biocompatibility of all the materials in contact with the live neural cell cultures,
2) chemical stability of chosen materials in saline and culture media, 3) automated multi-site recording and stimulation and
4) ease of handling.
The global measurable objective is to provide the European Community with a new tool for in-vitro electrophysiological tests which will reduce animal experiments and become an improved alternative to other time-consuming and expensive in-vitro experiments.
The performances of the micro-chamber will be validated by testing a set of known neurotoxic agents.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences neurobiology
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry metalloids
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
16145 Genova
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.