Advancing Preclinical Science for Next-Gen Therapies

At Transpharmation, we continue to expand and refine our preclinical platforms in order to better support your drug discovery programs. This month we are featuring:

• Abuse Liability
• Pain/Migraine
• Depression Models

If you are working to accelerate your next therapy, these updates may be especially valuable to you.

Abuse Liability Capabilities

Do you have a compound that you would like to evaluate for its efficacy in treating substance use disorder? Transpharmation offers oral and intravenous self-administration in rats — the gold-standard for evaluating reinforcement — in combination with customizable add-ons. Utilizing a range of common reinforcers (e.g., nicotine, alcohol, psychostimulants, and opioids), we have the capability to test whether your compound is effective in reducing drug intake, motivation to consume, relapse to drug-seeking, and withdrawal symptoms.

Transpharmation has state-of-the-art bespoke laboratories ready to test your compounds today.

Explore Abuse Liability capabilities

Pain/Migraine

Migraine is a complex disorder, the aetiology of which is still not fully understood. Treatment options are still limited, and drugs usually aim at decreasing recurring episodes, or decreasing the severity and length of an episode.

To capture the pathophysiological complexity of this neurovascular disorder, we have developed and validated three acute migraine models relying on different inducers.

We offer glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide 38 (PACAP-38) models.

The classical GTN model relies on nitric oxide-induced vasodilation and the subsequent release of several bioactive neuropeptides. It recapitulates the main clinical hallmarks of migraine.

CGRP has garnered a lot of attention as one of the main players in migraine, hence CGRP-targeting antibodies are now readily available for patients.

Finally, PACAP-38 is an emerging mediator in migraine that represents a very promising avenue to explore. Targeting this system could lead to a new subclass of compounds in the therapeutic arsenal against migraine.

We currently use our biomarker platform to further characterise changes in chemokine and cytokine levels within the trigeminovascular system in these models.

Explore Migraine capabilities

From Symptom Clusters (Endophenotypes) to Translational Insights in Mental Health

Complex human conditions such as depression may be simplified into discrete symptom clusters (endophenotypes), each of which may be more amenable to investigation in preclinical species.

There is an urgent need to discover new improved therapies. At Transpharmation we place emphasis on conducting tests based around such symptom clusters and which have a human equivalence, with the expectation that this will improve their predictive value. For example, both rodents and humans can be trained to perform similar computer-based tests to study their powers of motivation and attention.

Explore Depression capabilities