By introducing nematode worms into tiny microfluidic chips, researchers have achieved rapid screening of a chemical library for nerve-regenerating drugs.
Mehmet Fatih Yanik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues developed a way to load Caenorhabditis elegans worms onto the chip (pictured), which is just a few millimetres long. An individual worm is isolated and immobilized in a chamber, where it is imaged and undergoes laser surgery that severs key nerves. With the help of software, the researchers performed the surgery at a rate of three animals per minute.
The team then treated the worms with about 100 different chemicals. Several drugs stymied nerve regeneration, and further tests showed that one of the most potent suppressors, staurosporine, blocks a family of proteins that includes one called PKC. A drug that activates the pathway in which these proteins act boosted nerve regrowth.
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Drug development: Worm surgery on a chip. Nature 467, 886 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467886c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/467886c
