Investigating the chick embryo as a neurological injury model for screening new tissue engineering strategies

Neurological injury and disease can be highly debilitating for patients, often have no cure and place large demands on healthcare systems. For example, spinal injury is estimated to cost the UK economy about £1 billion per year [1]. Therefore, there is a global drive to produce effective new therapies for neural repair. One promising area in this regard is tissue engineering through the emergence of nanotechnologies, such as nanoparticles or nanofibrous hydrogels. These advanced medical tools can potentially act to deliver therapeutic agents (e.g. drugs/DNA) to sites of injury or guide and promote regeneration of damaged tissue [2–4].

A critical requirement in developing these new therapies is the ability to test their biocompatibility, toxicity and functional utility in simple yet neuromimetic models of neurological injury. However, this is often achieved using animal models which are technically complex, expensive and associated with significant ethical implications especially when introducing long-term neurological injury. As a promising alternative, the chick embryo replicates many features of mammalian nervous tissue [5]. These include, possessing all the major cells of the nervous system arranged in a characteristic cytoarchitecture and displaying some typical responses to injury - suggesting it may be used as a reductionist neurological injury model within which to test novel therapies. In addition, the embryo can be easily manipulated with minimal ethical considerations so could be readily adopted by regenerative neurology laboratories worldwide. Despite this, the utility of the chick embryo has never been assessed for testing therapeutic nanotechnologies in areas of neurological damage.

This studentship will perform the first investigation into the feasibility of such an approach by developing neurological injury paradigms within the chick embryo and assessing the biocompatibility and functional benefit of introducing therapeutic nanomaterials. Initially the project will focus on establishing injury models within the chick embryo spinal cord at different developmental stages. The project will employ multiple techniques including chick embryo culture and manipulation; application of nanomaterials within the embryo; and immunohistochemical staining, microscopy and image analysis to identify areas of tissue damage/repair.