Sign in for Helpathon #3: Daniela Salvatori
Daniela Salvatori calls for a Helpathon! She invites you to help her and TPI Utrecht to create a unique master course for animal free innovation. You can sign in for this Helpathon here: tpihelpathon.nl. Online, 18th - 19th of June 2020.
Related
Meeting videos
HelpathonsHealth
Helpathon #4 - can you help Frank?
Can you help Frank with integrating an immune system into a macaque lung organoid to address local immunity to tuberculosis with his vaccination strategy?
Join Helpathon #4, look at www.tpihelpathon.nl/coming-up !
Frank Verreck does research on tuberculosis at the Biomedical Primate Research Center (BPRC). Tuberculosis is the most deadly infectious disease worldwide! For the past hundred years, BCG (Bacillus Calmette Guérin) vaccinations take place through the skin. Research shows that macaques can be better protected from this infection by vaccination through their lungs. Frank really wants to further study the potential of this alternative vaccination strategy. He wants to understand how this BCG vaccination works in macaques lungs.
Meeting videos
HelpathonsIn vitro
Helpathon #4 - can you help Raissa?
Can you help Raissa find a more complex organoid-like brain and immune model based on rhesus microglia to study aging in relation to neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative diseases?
Join Helpathon #4, look at www.tpihelpathon.nl/coming-up !
Raissa Timmerman is a PhD student at the alternative unit at the Biomedical Primate Research Center. A better understanding of aging of the brain is key to studying neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative diseases. We believe there is a potential for breakthrough in using our existing live macaque data obtained from past aging experiments to develop more complex in vitro rhesus brain-like models and then to correlate all this data with data from human in vitro models and human live data.
Meeting videos
HelpathonsIn vitro
Helpathon #4 - can you help Anne-Marie?
Can you help Anne-Marie develop a more organ-like Rhesus 3D liver model in which she can study the dormancy and the waking up of malaria parasites?
Join Helpathon #4, look at www.tpihelpathon.nl/coming-up !
Anne- Marie Zeeman is a researcher at the Biomedical Primate Research Center (BPRC). Anne-Marie studies recurrent malaria ( P. vivax). She successfully developed a single cell layer in vitro model to study compounds affecting dormant and active malaria parasites in the liver of Rhesus monkeys. We believe that the cross correlation between in vitro Rhesus and in vitro human models will provide the missing link required to improve the drug development process and aid transition. A more refined Rhesus in vitro model can reduce the number of monkeys currently used for testing drugs. The data from in vivo monkeys combined with new in vitro models could help validate and develop reliable human in vitro models making testing on monkeys unnecessary detours.
Expert interviews
EducationInnovation
Wim de Leeuw: Aim and activities of TPI Utrecht
TPI Utrecht facilitates the Utrecht infrastructure to stimulate the transition to animal-free innovation. There is a helpdesk, a group of ambassadors, and a 3Rs Stimulus Fund. A digital marketplace for exchange of tissues is being developed, and as well a hybrid centre for biomedical translation, where there will increasingly be place for animal-free techniques.
New
Various subjects
InnovationPolicy
TPI.tv: improving science through animal-free innovations and research
Introducing TPI.tv : a video platform by experts striving to improve science through animal-free innovations and research.
Expert interviews
HealthEducation
Daniela Salvatori: TPI Utrecht
Prof. dr. Daniela Salvatori, chair of TPI Utrecht, presents the aims of the local TPI group and invites all who want to share their ideas or questions on the transition towards animal-free innovations to get in touch via uu.nl/tpi.
Expert interviews
HealthInnovation
Elly Hol (UMC Utrecht): possibilities for neuroscience
Prof. dr. Elly Hol (neuroscientist) talks about the opportunities for conducting animal-free research in Utrecht. She explains why it is necessary to use animal models next to cell-based models, for example for her Alzheimer research. More info at https://www.umcutrecht.nl/en/research/center/brain-center , http://translationalneuroscience.nl , http://www.ellyhollab.eu .
Innovation examples
HealthInnovation
Katja Wolthers (Amsterdam UMC) - virus research in human models: let's show some guts!
To study viruses that make people sick, we often use laboratory animals. However, virus infections in animals are different than in humans. New 3D culture models or 'organoids', which look like human organs in a petri dish, offer a unique opportunity to investigate how viruses enter the human body and cause disease. Our research focuses on enteroviruses such as polio. Due to vaccination, polio is rare, but other enteroviruses are increasingly a threat to young children and patients with impaired immune defenses. There are no medications available, because knowledge about infections with enteroviruses is limited. In our research we use organoids to see how enteroviruses enter the human body and by which means you can prevent that, without the use of laboratory animals. With this project we want to show that our technique can replace the use of laboratory animals in virus research.