New equipment arrived! Bioseb innovation now in our hands!

On July 9 we were finally able to open a huge wooden box that had arrived a week before. Assisted by Anne Desevre, a product development manager for Bioseb (France), we could finally experience the potentials of Kinetic Weight Bearing apparatus, which was founded by our newest research project OPUS no. 2014/13/B/NZ7/02311.

First, we started with a theoretical training. We needed to know the basic definitions of a step, what were „Geometric Center of Gravity” or „Weighted Center of Gravity” and finally what kind of parameters could be measured. Then, we started with real KWB testing. Well, it wasn’t easy at all! A few really critical points in a good video acquisition needed to be fulfilled. Additionally, animals needed to be trained to walk a 1.3 m long corridor. Anyway, we were not discouraged and after a full day training, millions of questions asked and many technical issues clarified, we were convinced that we would be capable of dealing with KWB and that we didn’t require Anne’s personal assistance. But if necessary, we’d use Anne’s friendly and reliable support via Skype 😉
Mateusz and Kuba dedicated the whole subsequent week to testing the optimal conditions for video capturing and most importantly to animal training. We have to admit that after 2-3 days of training rats were smoothly traveling through the unique sensor mat technology corridor.

Pain Lab is one of the very few research laboratories possessing KWB. The KWB has been validated by Marseille (CNRS UMR 7286, Faculty of Medecine, Université de la Mediterranée, Marseille) and Florida’s labs (The Miami project to Cure Paralysis) that had the equipment on rent. In the coming month, Bioseb is going to install a KWB in dual-version (Rat+Mice) at Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California.

We do hope we’ll be able to gain much exciting kinetic data. KWB provides information on applied weight as well as the speed and acceleration of each paw as the animal moves toward the end point of the runaway platform. This additional data provides facts on coordination and gait comparison paw-to-paw and step-to-step.
Well, it looks like we are ready to perform the first development curve for OA animals.

Wish us luck!