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

癫痫是一种毁灭性的神经系统紊乱，每100人中就有1人受其影响，给患者、亲属和NHS带来沉重负担。虽然存在一些抗癫痫药物，但它们并不是对所有患者都有效，它们只能将症状控制在最低限度，而不能治愈这种疾病。癫痫有几种病因，科学家们开始了解罕见的遗传性癫痫，并与其他睡眠和运动障碍有关。虽然每个单独的病例是罕见的，总的遗传性癫痫占癫痫总人数的很大一部分。遗传性癫痫是由于基因突变引起的，科学家需要在小动物身上研究这些基因，以了解它们是如何起作用并导致癫痫的。这通常是在老鼠身上做的，然而在老鼠身上研究基因是缓慢的，昂贵的，并且影响这些动物的福利，通常没有一个积极的结果。我们在此建议开发方法和仪器，使我们和其他科学家能够使用一种小昆虫，果蝇，来代替老鼠来研究癫痫基因。100多年来，果蝇在理解基因如何工作方面提供了很大的帮助，70%的人类基因在果蝇中是保守的。首先研究果蝇的癫痫基因将有助于研究更多的基因，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。这将有利于病人和老鼠的福利。

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.