Development of a Drosophila-based platform to replace and reduce animal experimentation in epilepsy research

癫痫是一种破坏性的神经系统疾病，每100人中就有1人受到影响，给患者、亲属和NHS带来沉重的负担。癫痫病是一种常见的疾病，它的发病原因是多种多样的。癫痫病的发病原因有多种，其中包括癫痫病的发病机制，癫痫病的病因，癫痫病的发病机制，癫痫病的发病机制，癫痫虽然每一个单独的病例都很罕见，但遗传性癫痫在癫痫总人口中占很大比例。遗传性癫痫是由于基因突变造成的，科学家需要在小动物中研究这些基因，以了解它们如何工作并导致癫痫。这通常是在小鼠中进行的，然而在小鼠中研究基因是缓慢的，昂贵的，并影响这些动物的福利，最终往往没有积极的结果。我们在这里建议开发的方法和仪器，将允许我们和其他科学家使用一种小昆虫，果蝇，代替小鼠来研究癫痫基因。100多年来，果蝇对理解基因的工作方式有很大的帮助，70%的人类基因在这种生物体中是保守的。首先研究果蝇中的癫痫基因将允许研究更多的基因，更快地研究它们，并确定最重要的基因，这些基因最终可能会在数量减少的小鼠中进行研究。这将有利于患者和小鼠的福利。

Epilepsy is a devastating disorder of the nervous system that affects 1 in 100 people and poses a heavy burden of patients, relatives and the NHS. While some anti-epileptic medicines exist, they do not work for all patients and they only keep the symptoms at minimum level, without being able to cure the disease.There are several causes of epilepsy, and scientists are beginning to understand rare forms of epilepsy that are hereditary and are associated with other disorders of sleep and movement. While each single case is rare, altogether hereditary epilepsies are a big portion of the total epileptic population.Hereditary epilepsies are due to mutation in genes and scientists need to study these genes in small animals to understand how they work and cause epilepsy. This is often done in mice, however studying genes in mice is slow, expensive and affects the welfare of these animals, often without a positive result at the end.We propose here to develop methods and instruments that will allow us and other scientists to use a small insect, the fruit fly, in place of mice to study epilepsy genes. The fruit fly has been of great help in understanding how genes work for over 100 years and 70% of human genes are conserved in this organism. Studying epilepsy genes in the fruitfly first will allow to study more genes, to study them faster and to identify the most important genes that may be eventually studied in a reduced number of mice. This will beneficial both for patients and for the welfare of the mice.