Drug Discovery Capabilities

in Vivo PHARMACOLOGY

 

Beacon's in vivo team is comprised primarily of behavioral pharmacologists with expert animal handling and testing skills working in a state-of-the-art small animal vivarium. The Beacon team:

  • Works across therapeutic areas, although focus has been largely CNS and behavioral pharmacology

  • worked on a diverse range of programs, both alone and in collaboration with industry partners, with several programs reaching clinical development

  • Runs all rodent in vivo screening, POC characterization, CNS safety, and exploratory tox studies in-house​​

​

Assays developed/established in house sorted by therapeutic or functional area include (but not limited to):

​

in Vivo PHARMACOLOGY

 

Beacon's in vivo team is comprised primarily of behavioral pharmacologists with expert animal handling and testing skills working in a state-of-the-art small animal vivarium. The Beacon team:

  • Works across therapeutic areas, although focus has been largely CNS and behavioral pharmacology

  • worked on a diverse range of programs, both alone and in collaboration with industry partners, with several programs reaching clinical development

  • Runs all rodent in vivo screening, POC characterization, CNS safety, and exploratory tox studies in-house​​

​

Assays developed/established in house sorted by therapeutic or functional area include (but not limited to):

Gastrointestinal Disorders

  • UC/Crohn's: Gut Barrier Function (NSAID Damage, FITC transport, DSS, TNBS)

  • UC/Crohn's: Immune modulation (T Cell adoptive transfer) 

  • Liver Fibrosis (CCL4, Bile duct ligation, Bleomycin)

Metabolism

  • Acute and chronic food intake monitoring

  • Meal patterning (behavioral satiety sequence)

  • Conditioned taste aversion

  • Insulin tolerance test

  • IP/IV/Oral glucose tolerance tests

Emotion/Anxiety/Depression

  • Open field 

  • Startle/fear potentiated startle

  • Ultrasonic vocalisations

  • Defensive burying

  • Tail suspension

  • Marble Burying

  • Plus Maze/O-Maze 

  • Geller-Seifter conflict

  • DRL Schedules

  • Schedule-induced polydipsia

Schizophrenia/Psychosis/antipsychotic-sensitive

  • Prepulse inhibition

  • Catalepsy: Raised bar, grid, hind-over-forelimb 

  • Conditioned avoidance responding

  • Social Interaction

Pain and Pruritis

  • Tail Flick (spinal)

  • Paw plethysmometry, Formalin, carageenan & CFA (inflammatory)

  • Paw Incision (surgical)

  • Pruritis 

Seizure

  •  PTZ-threshold

  • Maximum Electroshock (MES

Oncology

  •  CDX and PDX rodent models

  • Carcinogen Induced Cancers

Basic neurological function

  • Modified Irwin test: General observations, tail flick, grip strength, body temperature, motor activity, catalepsy, reflexes, coordination

Motor control/parkinsons

  • 6-OHDA lesions (rotation)

  • Gait Assessment

  • Carcinogen Induced Cancers

 Anhedonia/reward/motivation​

  • Conditioned place preference 

  • Locomotor activity, sensitisation

  • Operant work, Drug discrimination; Sucrose preference; Progressive ratio

Cognitive function

  • (Object recognition)

  • Fear conditioning

  • Social communication of a food preference

  • ​Operant work:

    • Delayed (non) match to sample?

    • DNMTP (standard and TUNL)

    • 5-choice serial reaction time task

    • Continuous Performance Task (CPT)

    • Serial order task

    • Reveral learning

Domain

- Recognition memory/visual discrimination    

- Associative learning
 

​

- Working memory    

- Working memory    

- Attention    

- Attention    

- Episodic working memory?    

- Visual discrimination/cognitive flexibility    

Miscellaneous     

  • Radiotelemetry (EEG, CV)

  • Sleep patterning     

  • Neuroendocrine profiling

  • H3 agonist-induced polydipsia

  • Kappa agonist-induced diuresis

  • Neuroendocrine profiling

  • IEG Mapping

  • C13 dietary profiling