To maintain IPK’s phenotypic screening facility, a steady and consistent improvement of advanced cutting-edge screening technologies is required. The aim of IPK's Technology Development Platform (TDP) is to further expand high content screening technologies used to investigate the relationship between cell and pathogen. Taking advantage of TDP’s multidisciplinary team composed of biologist, biophysicist, and microscopy specialists, we are developing imaging technologies to study infection, from nano- to macro-scale, in cell and animal models.

Examples of our activity include:

• Using novel imaging resonance energy transfer (RET) techniques, we are investigating the protein-protein interaction (PPI) occurring between pathogen and host protein in living cells, specifically focusing on the multiple pathways leading viruses to subvert the innate immunity of their hosts.
• Developing and adapting physiologically relevant cellular models to 384-well plates for high-content screening, using neurons, astrocytes and microglia derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Using this platform, we are studying the role of brain cell populations in the initiation of innate immune responses to neurotropic viruses.
• Taking advantage of near infrared fluorescent protein for their low absorption coefficient and auto-fluorescence to generate novel animal models reporting inflammatory responses in their brain. Moreover, we are exploring alternative multimodal strategy for in vivo and in vitro imaging, further closing the scale gap between live small animal imaging and post mortem histology.