Depression & Anxiety
Anxiety and depression are among the most prevalent and challenging psychiatric disorders, affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide and placing a substantial burden on patients, healthcare systems, and society. Although significant advances have improved our understanding of mood disorders, many patients continue to experience inadequate symptom control, delayed treatment responses, or relapse, highlighting the ongoing need for novel therapeutic approaches.
As new mechanisms, rapid-acting therapies, and neuroplasticity-focused treatments emerge, researchers require preclinical models that capture the complexity of emotional dysfunction, stress susceptibility, motivation, and treatment response. Transpharmation’s mood disorders platform combines validated behavioral assays, translational anxiety and depression models, and advanced biomarker capabilities to help generate data that supports confident progression from discovery through clinical development.
Transpharmation has developed a platform of sensitive and highly consistent pharmacodynamic screening assays responsive to standard SSRIs, anxiolytics, and most recently ketamine and psilocybin. This includes validated models addressing both depression and anxiety-related disorders across species. In addition to well-established rodent assays, we offer validated canine models of situational anxiety.
We aim to deliver highly translational models with high construct, face and predictive validity, sensitive to the effects of NCEs, providing a potential means to investigate the basic neuropathology underlying affective illnesses such as anxiety, depression and treatment-resistant depression (TRD).
Our scientific portfolio
Utilizing a controlled thunderstorm simulation, this model assesses behavioral and physiological responses in dogs, including activity levels and fear indicators, alongside physiological markers like cortisol levels and heart rate. This model has been instrumental in evaluating the efficacy of anxiolytic interventions, including pharmacological agents like diazepam and imepitoin, as well as natural supplements such as fish hydrolysate and botanical blends.
This model examines canine responses to standardized car travel, measuring indicators such as heart rate, cortisol levels, and stress-related behaviors to assess potential treatments for travel-associated anxiety. The model has been validated through studies demonstrating the anxiolytic effects of interventions like trazodone, dexmedetomidine oromucosal gel, and botanical supplements, providing a reliable framework for evaluating treatments aimed at alleviating travel-induced stress in canines.
EEG recording is a valuable, translational tool for characterization of sleep, mood disorders, and more. Since similar EEG readouts can be made from both rodents and human patients, EEG serves as a highly translational tool in preclinical drug discovery. Many currently marketed drugs have clear dose and time-dependent effects on specific EEG frequency bands, which can serve as pharmacodynamic biomarkers for target engagement, efficacy and tolerability. Our services include studying potential antidepressants’ and sleep modulators’ effects on rodent EEG through novel wireless bipotential telemetry technology from Data Sciences International (DSI). Transpharmation’s recent findings demonstrate the effect of sleep-inducing zolpidem (10 & 30 mg/kg) and anti-narcoleptic modafinil (100 & 300 mg/kg) as well as ketamine (5 & 10 mg/kg) and psilocybin (3 & 10 mg/kg) on sleep and EEG in male C57BL/6 mice. For study design and endpoints, see our 24-hour sleep-EEG studies.
The progressive ratio task is a translational operant behavioral task used to objectively measure effort-based motivation. The task is used in clinical populations and has demonstrated that people with depression exhibit deficits in responding to rewards with increasing levels of effort. Similarly in preclinical testing, chronic stress models of depression and administration of tetrabenazine have shown reduced responding of rats in the task. At Transpharmation we run this task with pharmacological interventions that either increase or decrease performance, depending on the question your compound needs to answer.
The effort-based food choice task is a translational operant assay used to assess motivation, effort allocation and reward valuation. Animals choose between a high-value reward that requires effort to obtain and a lower-value reward that is freely available, quantifying their willingness to work for reward. The task is sensitive to tetrabenazine, which induces motivational deficits and shifts behavior away from high-effort options, and supports evaluation of compounds targeting the amotivation and anhedonia relevant to depression.
The open field test is used to assess overall level of motor activity, anxiety-like behavior and willingness to explore new areas by laboratory animals. While mice have a natural aversion to brightly lit and open spaces, they also desire to explore new environments. Exploratory behavior is recorded for 5 minutes; total distance traveled, entries into the center, time in the center and time near walls are quantified with ANY-maze tracking — more time near walls and less time in the center indicating a higher level of anxiety. Administration of anxiolytic substances, such as buspirone (0.3 mg/kg i.p.), increases exploratory behavior.
The Novelty Suppressed Feeding test (NSF), which is based on hyponeophagia (a phenomenon where exposure to a novel environment suppresses feeding behavior), has been used extensively to assess anxiety-related behavior in mice. Validated by our research team, the NSF test is an effective behavioral paradigm for evaluating the efficacy of treatments with drugs such as anxiolytics and antidepressants, as their administration results in a decrease in the time (latency) needed by the animal to initiate feeding in the novel, anxiogenic environment.
The Marble Burying Test (MBT) is a widely used behavioral assay to assess anxiety and obsessive-like behavior in rodents. It is based on the natural tendency of rodents to bury objects in their environment, which is thought to be an instinctive response to perceived threats. In the MBT, mice are placed in a clean bedding environment with marbles on the surface. The number of marbles buried by the mice within a specific time frame is measured, with increased marble burying indicating higher levels of anxiety-like behavior. The MBT has been shown to be sensitive to anxiolytic drugs, such as diazepam and buspirone, which reduce marble burying behavior.
Relevant services
Platforms used in this area
Molecular Biomarkers & Histology Molecular biomarkers and tissue biomarker expression
Electroencephalography (EEG) In-vivo rodent telemetry
Operant Platform Motivation, impulsivity, attention, cognition, memory
PK/PD Studies Endpoints for lead optimization
PK-Bridge PK studies for discovery budgets
Cognitive Assessment Aged-dog memory and cognitive decline
Transgenics Genetically modified mice
Build stronger evidence for your mood disorders or anxiety program.
Whether you are exploring novel targets, validating mechanisms of action, or building evidence for clinical translation, our scientists work alongside you to design studies that answer the right questions early. From behavioral assays to advanced disease models, we help generate the data that accelerates drug discovery and development. Ready to advance your next Mood Disorders program?