StrEngthEning the ItaLIan InFrastructure of Euro-bioimaging (SeeLife)

The challenges linked to the modern biomedical and health related research and the emergence of new and complex paradigms in order to understand health related challenges such as the 5P (Predictive, Preventive, Participatory, Personalised, and Populational Medicine) paradigm and the One Health paradigm, require more and more an integrated multi-technological, multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach in order to maximize scientific outputs, efficacy and efficiency. As a consequence, to embrace the complexity of health problems, scientists (and industries) have to define programs and activities that involve different disciplines and technologies, usually not owned by single institutes and research technologies. Advances in microscopes herald a new era of progress in life sciences and medicine, leading to substantial improvements in health and well-being for global citizens. From the visualization of pathogens to imaging of host cellular and pathological processes, microscopes have been critical to our ability to fight disease. The need for microscopists in research, government and commercial establishments is undergoing a revolution driven by an urgent requirement set out by global governments to ease the burden of health and social care in Italy and beyond. From this point of view, the European Research Infrastructure Euro Bioimaging ERIC (EUBI) can be instrumental in building long-term capacity and establishing unique territorial advantages that can help attract finance, industrial interest and mobile resources, for example talented scientists. EUBI-ITA is the Italian component of EUBI, the European Research Infrastructure landmark ESFRI for biological and biomedical (preclinical and clinical) imaging. It includes four Nodes (15 centres): one devoted to biological imaging and three medical imaging Nodes. Altogether, the Nodes provide access to cutting edge multimodal imaging technologies across scales, from molecules to men, to imaging related services (e.g. cellular and animal model preparation, probes/tracers preparation and characterization, advanced image data processing and analysis etc) and expertise. Support is available for advanced applications including quantitative assessment of biomarkers as well as “in vitro” assays for the validation of the imaging experiments. EUBI-ITA is the second most accessed EUBI node in Europe demonstrating the competence and importance of the service provided by it. In addition the members of the node are also frontiers of imaging research and they develop advanced imaging instruments, reagents and methods. The more such a network based approach is developed, the easier it will be to interconnect industry, higher education research institutions and governments in the fundamental processes of knowledge creation, access and use in the long term. In accordance with the intervention strategies of interest, the research area and the respective priority technological trajectories, SEE LIFE is proposed as a national and international reference point, for the strengthening of Biomedical Imaging and Advanced Light Microscopy. The CNR, as the national representative entity hosting five EuroBioimaging centres and lead actor as identified in PNIR documents, has decided to promote this initiative in recognition of its role of support to the whole scientific community working with.
The strengthening of the EUBI-ITA technologies is fundamental and the activities include the acquisition and the installation of appropriate instruments for the specific technologies in each center and the development of novel imaging techniques in collaboration with other sections of the infrastructure. In some cases the technology will be advanced in-house by developing new approaches, probes, laser sources or methodologies. Along with the procurement of the instruments or their construction, we will also invest in the selection of appropriate personnel with required aptitude to develop an expertise in these technologies. These personnel will then be trained in-house (if the potentiation involves upgradation of already existing technology) or in other laboratories/facilities where the technology is already available.

The strengthening of the EUBI-ITA will work on following technologies :

1. Advanced Volume EM – array tomography, FIB-SEM imaging, correlative light/electron microscopy
2. Immunogold based localization coupled to 3D reconstruction
3. Label-free and Raman Microscopy, Correlative confocal-Raman microscopy
4. Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS); Single-cell-based, imaged lipidomic analysis
5. In vivo functional imaging in moving and head-fixed animals
6. High throughput microscopy
7. Super-resolution microscopy – STED, STORM, SIM
8. Hyperspectral microscopy; high-speed spinning disc confocal microscopy; VR-SFG microscopy TSFG microscopy
9. High resolution Neuro-MRI (morphology, functional, connectomics) (preclinical, clinical)
10. MRI-guided Therapy under acoustic stimulation (preclinical)
11. SPINlab hyperpolarizer for metabolic PET-MRI (preclinical and clinical)
12. Multimodal PET/SPECT/CT/NIRF(BLI) imaging (preclinical)
13. SPECT/CT/3D Autoradiography (preclinical)
14. Production of Radiopharmaceuticals
15. High resolution photon counting CT (clinical)
16. PET/MRI/EEG technology (clinical)