Phenomefrontier
The goal of the Phenomefrontier part of the project is to provide a European platform offering access to comprehensive systemic phenotyping comprising several disease areas to every laboratory. This platform will include the latest in vivo imaging techniques and non-invasive methods, as well as informatics tools to handle the phenotype data. Systemic phenotype analysis has set the new standard. It allows to unravel all facets of complex mouse mutant phenotypes.
The relevant parties involved in Phenomefrontier are key members of the EUMORPHIA and EUMODIC consortia. In addition, three scientific partners not represented in these networks will join Infrafrontier. The phenome data generated will be accessible via the Europhenome database.
EUMORPHIA pioneered the development of standardized and validated phenotyping assays in a wide variety of indications. EUMODIC, launched in 2007, will for the first time undertake a pilot study on large-scale phenotyping in a joint European effort. Phenotyping facilities are already in operation at MRC Harwell, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the ICS Strasbourg and the Helmholtz Zentrum München. However, the scale and technology will not fit to future need.
The existing facilities will be upgraded and new ones will be constructed for assigning phenotypes to the increasing number of new mouse models from different pipelines. Phenomefrontier is a program that aims to play a leading role on the worldwide level.