A small animal imager for drug delivery and tissue engineering research

探索治疗药物的作用机制，提高治疗药物在动物体内的性能，是开发新的、创新的治疗干预措施不可缺少的部分。在小动物身上评估治疗剂的性能在学术环境中是理想的，因为它具有成本效益，并在大型动物在工业环境中进行测试之前提供了一个最佳系统。然而，小动物试验是劳动密集型的。这通常需要大量的动物，因为传统的方法是在研究结束时回收治疗剂，并在给定的一段时间后调查它们的作用。最近的技术进步创造了小型动物成像器，在这些成像器中，可以基于发光探针有效地获得分子、细胞和组织水平的信息。这种新的方法开始允许我们在原位探索治疗药物的作用机制，而不需要牺牲动物来取回这些药物。它使研究人员能够快速设计治疗剂，并在短时间内优化其性能。这个项目的目的是为此目的获得一种最先进的仪器。该仪器将通过提供有关我们的治疗方法的有价值的信息来增强我们的研究能力，并通过为我们的研究提供持续可用的重要工具来加快我们的研究活动。它将导致在研究中减少动物的使用，并对人类使用的治疗剂进行更全面的评估。

Probing the mechanism of action and improving the performance of therapeutic agents in animals are indispensable parts of developing new and innovative therapeutic interventions. Evaluating the performance of therapeutic agents in small animals is ideal in an academic setting since it is cost effective and provides an optimal system before large animal testing in an industrial setting. Small animal testing, however, is labour intensive. It usually requires large number of animals since the conventional approach is to recover the therapeutic agents at the end of a study period and investigate their action after a given period of time. Recent technologies advances have created small animal imagers where molecular, cellular and tissue-level information could be effectively obtained based on light-emitting probes. This new approach is beginning to allow us to probe the mechanisms of action of therapeutic agents in situ without the need to sacrifice the animal for the retrieval of such agents. It is allowing researchers to rapidly engineer therapeutic agents and optimize their performance in a short period of time. This project is intended to acquire a state-of-the-art instrument for this purpose. This instrument will enhance our research capability by providing valuable information about our therapeutic approaches, and expedite our research activity by making a vital tool available continually for our research. It will lead to reduced use of animals in research and provide a more comprehensive evaluation of therapeutic agents intended for human use.