Accelerating drug screening on worms using mild electric field
C. elegans: Caenorhabditis elegan referred to as C. elegan is a free-living, transparent roundworm, about 1 mm in length. It lives in temperate soil environments. In the wild, it feeds on bacteria that develop on decaying vegetable matter. C. elegans is studied as a model organism because it is a multicellular organism that is simple enough to be studied in great detail. Strains are cheap to breed and can be frozen and when subsequently thawed they are able to live and grow, allowing long-term storage. In addition, C. eleagan is transparent, facilitating the study of cellular differentiation and other developmental processes in the intact organism. C. elegans is one of the few forms of life not known to have a natural virus. Also in the study of human diseases, C. eleagans is a proven animal model as it utilizes many of the same proteins and molecules as humans. It also has a generation time of approximately only four days and a lifespan of about two to three weeks. This accelerates the understanding of the function of disease-related proteins.
Accelerating drug screening on worms using mild electric field
Researchers at McMaster University have developed a way to propel and direct C. elegans along a narrow channel using a mild electric field. The researchers demonstrate movement of the worms forward and in reverse inside a microchannel, guided by the direction of the electric field (electrotaxis). The researchers also observed that the response of the worms was dependent on its age and neuronal development. This allows for large numbers of worms to be sorted and handled in an automated manner.
Assistant professor of biology, Bhagwati Gupta said, “This is the first time that worms have been stimulated to move in a micro-channel device in a very precise and directed way. It will allow researchers to study in real time how a proposed drug affects neurons and muscles that control motion of a live specimen.” Ravi Selvaganapathy, assistant professor of mechanical engineering said, “The electrotaxis of the worms has the potential to automate what is currently a slow, manual process for drug screening on worms (Currently, researchers observe worms individually under a microscope as they move in a random manner or in a direction forced by pressure). The system is fairly easy and inexpensive to scale up to conduct rapid screening of tens of thousands of chemicals in worms to identify drug candidates in a cost-effective manner. Such discovery could accelerate clinical trials in people by allowing scientists to focus only on relevant drugs and would use limited resources more efficiently.”
Source: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/story.cfm?id=6557
January 6, 2010