Development of Noninvasive System for Detection of Sleep Apnea in Animals

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long term goal of this project is to develop and commercialize noninvasive equipment, called the sleep and respiratory track (SARTrak) system, for high throughput detection of sleep apnea in animals. The specific goal for the Phase I application is to design and evaluate a basic model of the SARTrak system with eight chambers (one chamber per animal), i.e., SARTrak-8, for detection of sleep apnea in mice. This project will subsequently pave the way for future development and commercialization of a high throughput model, SARTrak-64, a 64 chamber of SARTrak system, to target the drug screening market. Sleep Apnea is a common medical condition, present in 5%-9% of the population. There is currently no drug available for pharmacotherapy of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea occurs during sleep but not wake suggesting the crucial involvement of neural regulation and the possibility of pharmacotherapy. However, currently there are no effective drugs for individuals with sleep apnea.A critical reason for this discrepancy is a lack of an efficient way to screen anti-apnea drugs. Although, molecular and cell based assays are commonly used in drug development, however, this requires a clear concept pathology of the disease. This is notavailable in sleep apnea so far and electrophysiologically recorded apnea during sleep is the only recognized marker of the disease. This background prompt use for the development of a noninvasive high throughput model of equipment that is able to detect sleep apnea much more efficiently. We propose three specific aims to design, develop and test the aforementioned equipment, i.e., SARTrak-8 as the Phase I study. We will design and develop the hardware of SARTrak-8 by combining the piezo electric film (PEF) technique and whole body plethysmography. We will develop a data acquisition and offline analysis software program for the SARTrak-8 system. The program will collect PEF activity for both behavior and respiratory activity as well as analyze and calculate sleep apnea automatically. We will finally evaluate the entire system of SARTrak-8 in mice for the accuracy and efficiency. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project will design, develop and test a basic model of noninvasivesleep and respiratory track (SARTrak) system, i.e., SARTrak-8, for the noninvasive and automatic detection of sleep apneas in mice. The phase I project will establish a foundation for further developing the high throughput model of SARTrak system aimed totarget on a market for anti sleep apnea drug screening. Successful completion of this project will establish a strong and solid foundation for the Phase II development and lead to commercialization of this product and may accelerate the development of sleep apnea pharmacotherapy.