CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL BOSTON UTILIZING CUTTING EDGE GAIT IMAGING TECHNOLOGY
BOSTON, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Mouse Specifics, Inc. [MSI] announced that the
Animal Resources facility at Children's Hospital Boston is providing MSI's
DigiGait ventral plane videography technology for gait analysis to Children's
Hospital/Harvard Medical School scientists. Children's Hospital Boston has
purchased two DigiGait Imaging Systems, dedicated to the study of mouse and
rat models of human childhood diseases.
"We are pleased about the placement of the DigiGait instrumentation at
Children's Hospital," said MSI CEO Dr. Thomas Hampton. "These Harvard
researchers will have exceptional tools with which to study their animal
models of developmental disorders that affect how children crawl, walk, run,
and fall."
Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's leading pediatric research
center, with over $200 million in annual funding and 750,000 square feet of
space. At Children's Hospital, hundreds of Harvard Medical School scientists
are identifying factors that contribute to childhood and adult diseases, and
developing effective treatments for them. Animal Resources at Children's
Hospital [ARCH] is a veterinarian-supervised facility that supports Children's
Hospital investigators in accomplishing their research objectives. ARCH
provides animal husbandry, animal care-and-use training, safety monitoring,
and access to life sciences technology. DigiGait will be utilized to
identify and quantify postural and kinematic abnormalities in animal models of
human genetic disorders, such as muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular
atrophy.
The DigiGait Imaging System is patented non-invasive instrumentation licensed
by Pharmaceutical Companies, including Pfizer and Merck, Biotechnology
Companies, including Genzyme and Vertex, and Academic Centers, including Yale
and Northwestern University. The DigiGait Imaging System at The Children's
Hospital Boston underscores the capacity of the technology to detect early
symptoms of subtle gait disorders. DigiGait reports numerous spatial and
dynamic metrics of locomotion in mice, rats, guinea pigs, and hamsters walking
overground, on a treadmill, at a range of speeds, uphill, and downhill, to
characterize potential defects and to accelerate the development of corrective
therapies.
Dr. Kathleen Sweadner, a Harvard Medical School Researcher at Massachusetts
General Hospital, said, "DigiGait has been very useful in our research of
rapid-onset dystonia-Parkinsonism in its ability to detect quantifiable gait
disturbances in genetically-modified animal models of the human inherited
disease. I am confident that my colleagues at The Children's Hospital will
find numerous opportunities for quantitative assessment of posture and gait in
a range of models."
Visit www.MouseSpecifics.com.
SOURCE Mouse Specifics, Inc.
Ms. Anais Giudicelli, +1-617-821-6687, giudicelli@mousespecifics.com
