In Vivo Imaging Analysis System - Xenogen IVIS Spectrum

描述（由申请人提供）：多种荧光染料，蛋白质和纳米颗粒可用于体内分子成像。各种标记细胞进行体内想象的靶向方法已经开发出来，使用活性底物来进行特定的代谢活动，抗体策略来检测细胞特异性表面分子，以及各种转基因策略来引入利用荧光和生物发光底物的报告蛋白。所有这些方法都极大地提高了追踪特定细胞在分化过程中或特定生物过程（如转移或干细胞移植）中活动的能力。该共享仪器提案是用于购买IVIS想象系统光谱仪器（Xenogen/Caliper生命科学公司）。这种新一代仪器是为活体小动物生物发光和荧光探针的高灵敏度成像而设计的。该仪器具有灵活的荧光成像配置，包括反射和透射照明选项和大型可扫描滤光片组。多个透照位置，结合结构光获得表面形貌，为执行3D层析重建提供必要的数据。它将被15名研究人员使用，这些研究人员由6项R01拨款、3项P01拨款、1项K奖和2项R21 NIH拨款资助。目前，所有的研究人员都在使用动物牺牲后提取的组织和细胞来评估这些组织内的生物活性，或者在其他机构进行合作研究，以使用新仪器支持的拟议方法方法获得初步数据。使用所提出的仪器将使我们能够以高通量，非侵入性和非破坏性的方式跟踪标记细胞在活体动物和完整的检索后组织中的活动。波士顿大学医学院的这种仪器的可用性为我们的技术能力增加了一个重要的新维度，以充分利用波士顿大学医学院正在进行的许多转基因动物、癌细胞系和干细胞研究项目。拟议的仪器将作为波士顿大学医学院的共享仪器核心开发，并将使众多研究人员能够将这种新的成像技术与其他成像和定量方法相结合，如细胞分选、共聚焦显微镜、微ct和MRI分析，这些都是波士顿大学目前可用的核心设备。将使用该仪器的研究项目涉及癌症、血液学、免疫学、肺病、骨科、眼科和肾脏研究的研究项目。跟踪细胞活动、跟踪细胞生长和跟踪活动物体内细胞运动的能力与干细胞、癌症和药物治疗的发展有着巨大的相关性。使用这种方法的研究在动物使用方面也具有成本效益，允许在不对动物安乐死的情况下对细胞活动进行多次连续测量。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A wide variety of fluorescent dyes, proteins and nanoparticles can be used for in vivo molecular imaging. Various targeting approaches to tag cells for in vivo imagining have been developed using reactive substrates for specific metabolic activities, antibody strategies to detect cell specific surface molecules and various transgenic strategies to introduce reporter proteins that make use of fluorescent and bioluminescent substrates. All of these approaches have led to an immense increase in the ability to track the activities of specific cells during differentiation or over the time course of specific biological processes such as metastasis or stem cell transplantation. This shared instrumentation proposal is for the purchase an IVIS Imagining System Spectrum Instrument (Xenogen/Caliper Life Sciences Inc). This new generation instrumentation is designed for high sensitivity imaging of bioluminescent and fluorescent probes in live small animals. The instrument has flexible imaging configurations for fluorescence, including reflection and transmission illumination options and large scannable filter sets. Multiple transillumination positions, combined with structured light for obtaining surface topography, provides the necessary data to perform 3D tomographic reconstructions. It will be used by 15 investigators funded by 6 R01 grants, 3 P01 grants, a K award, and 2 R21 NIH grants. Currently, all of the investigators are using retrieved tissues and cells after animal sacrifice to assess biological activities within these tissues, or have carried out collaborative studies at other facilities to obtain preliminary data using the proposed methodological approaches that would be supported by the new instrumentation. The use of the proposed instrumentation will enable us to follow in a high throughput, non- invasive and non destructive manner the activities of the tagged cells both in living animals and within intact post retrieval tissues. The availability of this instrumentation at Boston University Medical School adds an important new dimension to our technical abilities to take full advantage of many of the transgenic animals, cancer cell lines, and stem cell research projects that are ongoing at Boston University Medical School. The proposed instrumentation will be developed as a shared instrument core at both Boston University Medical School and will enable the numerous investigators to integrate this new imagining technology with other imaging and quantitative approaches such as cell sorting, confocal microscopy and microCT and MRI analysis that are all currently available as core facilities at Boston University. The research projects that will use this instrument address research projects in cancer, hematological, immunological, pulmonary, orthopedics, ophthalmology and renal research. The ability to follow cell activities, track cell growth and follow cell movement within living animals has immense relevance to development of stem cell, cancer and pharmacological therapies. Studies using this type of approach are also cost effective in terms of animal use allowing for many consecutive measurements of cell activities to be made with out euthanasia of the animal.