Transpharmation has developed a world-class rodent operant platform that allows testing of NCEs against discrete symptom clusters such as: Motivation, Motor Behaviour, Motor Impulsivity, Choice Impulsivity, Compulsive Behaviour, Drug Discrimination, Attention and Anxiety. The operant testing modality, which includes our standard operant and 5-choice chambers provides the sensitivity to detect subtle yet significant variations in behavioural response. Transpharmation also regularly co-develops customized testing paradigms, providing additional opportunities for sponsors to fully develop the value of their emerging NCEs.

Drug Discrimination

All drugs of abuse, as well as certain non-abused drug classes, will produce an internal state that the rat can be trained to discriminate from a neutral stimulus such as saline injection. Drug discrimination procedures typically rely on a two-lever operant procedure. NCE’s may be tested for (a) their ability to either substitute (generalise) to a known drug cue (i.e suggestive of a similar interoceptive state) or (b) their ability to antagonise a known drug cue (i.e suggestive of an ability to block the interoceptive state of a known drug). Alternatively rats may be trained with an NCE to see if it can support a discrimination opening up opportunities to identify which known drugs may generalise. Transpharmation has experience in each of these areas.

Validation Data: Cross generalisation between a nicotine and diazepam cue
Nicotine cue
Diazepam cue

Separate groups of rats were trained to discriminate either nicotine (0.3 mg/kg) from saline (Nicotine), or Diazepam (2 mg/kg) from saline (DZP). As expected Nicotine trained rats showed a dose related generalisation to the nicotine lever, and DZP trained rats showed a dose related generalisation to the diazepam lever. However diazepam administered to Nicotine group, and nicotine administered to DZP group produced only at best a very weak (~25%) generalisation, thus showing the specificity of each cue type.