DATE: December 11, 2018
TIME: 14:00 GMT, 15:00 CET, 09:00 EST, 06:00 PST

Animal disease models offer great value for pre-clinical research and efficient drug screening and this is also true for lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, lung cancer and others. Due to the complex interaction of the immune system and the mechanical properties of the lung, animal models are an attractive option. In recent years, techniques for imaging mice (and other animals) in vivo, non-invasively, have become ubiquitous and offer the fundamental benefit of using fewer animal subjects by replacing classical histology on post mortem tissue slices. Another positive outcome is the continuity of using a single animal over time, thus yielding better data.

One particular imaging modality, low-dose micro-computed tomography (microCT), has shown great potential for analysing pulmonary morphology and function non-invasively, longitudinally and in 3D. Imaging of pulmonary mouse models has offered some challenges in the past; the lung’s deep location, it’s highly porous nature, the fast breathing motion and size of the mouse itself, were previously limiting factors until now.

In this webinar Dr Christian Dullin from the University Medical Centre Göttingen will explain how the PerkinElmer Quantum microCT Imaging System was used to measure alterations in lung function in mice, allowing new insights across a range of pulmonary diseases. His methodology proves that technology developments in the Quantum microCT Imaging System have overcome the previous limitations.

Dr Sasha Belenkov of PerkinElmer will further explain the technology developments of the Quantum microCT Imaging System and how this has overcome previous challenges inherent in imaging pulmonary mouse models.

Finally, Dr Francesca Ruscitti from Chiesi Farmaceutici in Italy will discuss how she used the Quantum microCT Imaging System in a specific lung disease study, namely fibrosis in an IPF-like bleomycin-induced murine model. Francesca will explain how microCT was used to non-invasively monitor and quantify parenchymal lesions in a murine model of lung fibrosis so they were able to follow fibrosis progression in the individual animal and thus drastically reduce the number of mice used.

Differently from the ex vivo read outs, which require an extensive further processing of tissues of interest, microCT imaging can provide a dynamic and accurate quantification of the disease progression in longitudinal studies.

Learning Objectives:

• How to measure lung function using the Quantum microCT Imaging System
• How microCT 3D imaging can reduce the number of mice used in lung disease research and improve data quality