The Optogenetics and Vectorology Foundry of the Canadian Neurophotonics Platform aims to fill tool development gaps in the Canadian neuroscience research community. It is a consortium of research sites across the country engaged in an open science initiative to accelerate the development of optogenetics tools and facilitate their testing in a wide variety of experimental paradigms. The Foundry also hopes to optimize translatability across species and disease models, including translation towards clinical optogenetics application via gene transfer approaches. Two complementary core groups, the biosensor/actuator engineering and the AAV production teams, will work in close collaboration with various testing sites committed to the validation of tools in various model systems: primary cells (rodents), human cells/tissue and organoids, in vivo invertebrates and lower vertebrates, in vivo rodents, in vivo non-human primates. It is expected that each tool will cycle between the engineering, AAV production, and testing groups multiple times until it is mature enough for broad deployment in clinical research.
For More information, please visit the neurophotonics website
