Logo PIXANIM
Presentation

Presentation of the PIXANIM Platform

Phenotyping by in/eX vivo Imaging from the ANImal to the Molecule
PIXANIM is an experimental and analytical platform, serving a large community of academic and private actors, to support agronomic and medical research, training and innovation.
It allows the functional exploration of the different biological systems of an animal, from the entire animal to the biomolecule, including all intermediate scales.

The PIXANIM platform offers different tools of in vivo investigation, favouring non-invasive approaches for dynamic and/or ex vivo studies, from the entire animal to the molecule via all intermediate scales (organs, tissues, pro- and eukaryotic cells, fluids), in order to finely phenotype all the biological systems constituting the animal and to characterise the molecular mechanisms explaining these phenotypes.

Workflow

©PIXANIM@INRAE

With its infrastructure, the platform is able to accommodate a variety of animal models such as large farmed mammals and birds; and to accommodate over long periods (several months) mammalian (sheep, goats, pigs) and avian (hens, quails) models for dynamic studies over time, with approval.
The platform also offers facilities and equipments for the practice of interventional physiology, in similar conditions to those present in hospitals, and can receive any team wishing to work in its own field of expertise.
In a continuum of analyses, PIXANIM proposes a set of tools and develops analytical strategies allowing the acquisition of high throughput, multi-scale and multi-modal phenotypic measurements. Thus, different in/ex vivo imaging technologies (Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3T), CT-Scan, fluorescence laser endomicroscopy, 3D Doppler ultrasound, molecular imaging by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry) can be applied and combined with each other or with molecular analysis tools (high resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometry) in proteomics (peptides, proteins) and lipidomics (lipids).
Thus, providing anatomical, structural, functional and metabolic analyses, PIXANIM provides a better understanding of the development/functioning of organs and major physiological functions and their regulatory systems and thus tends towards a more predictive biology.
The PIXANIM platform is in line with major scientific orientations, anchored to the "One Welfare" concept linking animal welfare, animal and human health and the environment, making it possible to characterise the dynamic interactions between the components of a living animal, itself interacting with its environment.

OneWelfareOneAnimal

©PIXANIM@INRAE

In this way, the PIXANIM platform supports:

  •     agronomic research to meet the challenges of efficient production systems natural resources and animal welfare, respecting the environment;
  •     medical research for the search of markers, the development of new therapies and the use of animal models for pre-clinical research;
  •     teaching with various actions for continuing or initial training;
  •     innovation with different researchers and socio-economic partners to transfer and valorise applied research to economic markets.

Modification date: 09 January 2024 | Publication date: 06 October 2020 | By: VL