Drosophila melanogaster, a.k.a. the common fruit fly, is a simple organism that may give a rapid, high-throughput response in regard to the therapeutic efficacy of nanoparticles and drugs, while circumventing the high environmental and monetary cost of today’s typical in vivo assays involving more complex animals, along with the immeasurable suffering imposed onto them. Here we give the progress report on our effort to turn D. melanogaster into a model organism for the in vivo testing of Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) penetration of nano-particles and the treatment of infectious disease. We show that orally ingested superparamagnetic nanoparticles successfully cross the BBB in D. melanogaster and localize to the optic lobes of the third instar larval brain, while causing no adverse effects to the invertebrate organisms. We also show that both orally ingested calcium phosphate nanoparticles and biofilm-forming P. aeruginosa localize to the Drosophila crop, the food storage organ of the fly, which shrinks in response to infection. The model does not induce mortality consequential to infection and the effects of the internalization and proliferation of the microbes are evaluable by measuring the crop parameters, including fluorescence intensity and size. Continued development of these two models could simplify the preclinical testing of medical treatments and of pharmaceutical agents for neurological and infectious disease, while ensuring robust and reliable levels of statistical significance at low cost.

中文翻译：

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果蝇作为纳米生物环境中血脑屏障渗透和传染病的典范生物

果蝇（果蝇，又称普通果蝇）是一种简单的生物，可就纳米颗粒和药物的治疗功效提供快速，高通量的响应，同时规避了当今涉及更多生物活性的典型体内试验的高环境和金钱成本复杂的动物，以及它们身上难以估量的痛苦。在这里，我们提供了有关将黑腹果蝇变成模型生物以进行体内纳米颗粒的血脑屏障（BBB）渗透测试和治疗传染病的努力的进展报告。我们表明，口服摄取的超顺磁性纳米粒子成功地穿过了黑腹果蝇中的血脑屏障。并定位于第三龄幼虫大脑视神经叶，同时对无脊椎动物无不利影响。我们还表明，口服摄取的磷酸钙纳米颗粒和生物膜形成铜绿假单胞菌都定位于果蝇。作物，果蝇的食物储存器官，会因感染而收缩。该模型不会导致感染所致的死亡，并且微生物的内在化和增殖作用可通过测量包括荧光强度和大小在内的农作物参数来评估。继续开发这两种模型可以简化药物治疗和神经疾病和感染性疾病的临床前测试，同时以低成本确保强大而可靠的统计意义。