Equipments

The EA 2496 has, at its disposal: an animal room, 2 cell culture rooms (L2 is currently under construction), a surgery room as well as the required material for molecular biology and biochemical analyses as well as for the histological, enzymatic and immunological study of mineralized tissue.

Calcified tissues analysis requires a specific expertise, which is part of the background of our laboratory. We participate in the French Society of Biology of Mineralized Tissues (http://sfbtm.fr/), in BIOMAT, in the European Calcified Tissue Society (ECTS) as well as the International Conference on the Chemistry and Biology of Mineralized Tissues (ICCBMT) in order to develop a national and international research network around this topic. We have recently expanded our research activity by developing a “preclinical Imaging” with X-rays micro-tomography approach in our project. Advances in three-dimensional X-ray imaging allow a real-time exploration of small animal bone/tooth microstructure and lead to the detection of abnormal shape or structure. It allows to follow-up growth and induced bone/tooth repair. We have already applied this Imaging approach to all our protocols in order to limit the number of animals used and to guide the consecutive histological analysis. The recruitment of a research engineer (Lotfi Slimani), and a research technician (Jeremy Sadoine) and the acquisition of a high-resolution micro-CT for living small animals (FRM large equipment grants 2011), of a system for anesthesia and monitoring dedicated to small animal (murine model), of a storage server (32 To) and 3 workstation for image post analysis have developed this activity. The field of our expertise deal with the study of calcified and osseous tissues, soft tissues or vascularization network (with contrast agent) in vivo and ex vivo, image analysis by advanced methods for collaboration or service with academic or private research teams. Our laboratory is now part of the Life Imaging platform network at Paris Descartes (PIV, labeled IBISA; http://piv.parisdescartes.fr/)