With this and the brain in a dish we could discover how neuroplasticity and stem cells work.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/248228.php
Just like populations of human beings, clusters of living cells are made
up of individuals possessing unique qualities. Traditional analytic
techniques however evaluate cells in tissue aggregates, often
overlooking single-cell nuances that can offer valuable clues concerning
health and disease.
ASU Senior Scientist and Professor, Deirdre Meldrum, and her colleagues
at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute are pioneering a kind
of miniaturized laboratory for the investigation of single cells. Known
as the Cellarium, this live cell array technology will enable
researchers to investigate the detailed behavior of individual cells -
providing unprecedented insights into their role in disease processes.
"Just as an aquarium is for viewing and studying live fish, the
'Cellarium' is for viewing and studying live cells," Meldrum says. "The
Cellarium is an innovative, disposable microarray with sensors for
dynamic, high-throughput measurements of live single cells. It is
capable of multiparameter metabolic measurements of biosignatures
induced by perturbation," she explains.
Currently under a $1.5 million grant from the NIH, the Cellarium project
is the fruit of over a decade of scientific progress. Much of this work
has been carried out with Meldrum's Center for Biosignatures Discovery
Automation, a multidisciplinary team Meldrum directs and that has
devoted significant resources to the study of single-cell physiology.
Other key investigators in the Cellarium project include Drs. Honor
Glenn, Mark Holl, Laimonas Kelbauskas, Yanqing Tian, Cody Youngbull, and
Mr. Cliff Anderson.
An NIH Center of Excellence in Genomic Sciences known as the Microscale
Life Sciences Center at Biodesign, also directed by Meldrum, has created
and developed the Cellarium's early generation technology, with the
assistance of partners at the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center, and Brandeis University.
The new grant is part of the NIH Common Fund project known as LINCS -
Library of Integrated Network-Based Cellular Signatures, which is a
library of molecular signatures describing cell behavior in response to a
variety of perturbing agents.
The central hypothesis of the LINCS project is that subjecting cells to
perturbation can cause changes in the behavior and/or function that
result in changes in the observable physical or biochemical
characteristics of a cell or cell phenotype. Observing phenotypic cell
changes in response to perturbation will help scientists better
understand how environmental stresses on cells can cause them to
transition to disease states.
While LINCS centers at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute
are actively gathering molecular information, Meldrum stresses that the
Cellarium's keen analytical capability to record dynamic characteristics
of individual live cells in real time will provide a unique data set
not attainable by any existing method. "We will be adding the dimensions
of single-cell physiology and time to the LINCS database," Meldrum
says.
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