Psychiatric Disorder Modeling
Psychiatric disorder, also known as mental disorder or psychosis, is a group of conditions characterized by abnormal thoughts, cognition, emotion, and behaviors, which is mainly caused by brain dysfunction under the influence of various biological, psychological, and social environmental factors. In 2019, nearly one in five adults suffer from different mental illnesses in the United States. However, R&D, as well as clinical approval success rates for psychosis drugs and other central nervous systems (CNS) drugs, fall far below drugs for non-CNS disorders due to the challenges in the exploration of the disease mechanisms and modeling.
Animal models are crucial tools for understanding the molecular pathological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders and novel drug development. But psychiatric disorder modeling remains a challenge since that:
-
There are few objective measures or biological characteristics that can be used to diagnose psychosis;
-
The high complexity of the human nervous system and the blood-brain barrier making it difficult for traditional animal modeling to achieve the desired effect;
-
Most human psychiatric disorders are heterogeneous and maybe a combination of multiple causes, at which point animal modeling limited;
Genetic Manipulation Models for Psychiatric Disorders
Genetic manipulation models are animals (mainly mouse) carrying an altered genome by the means of genetic engineering techniques, which has become an indispensable and useful tool for preclinical research. Currently, genetically modified animal models are increasingly used for psychiatric disorder investigations, specific gene research, and therapeutic intervention development. With the advancement of genetic technologies, more and more challenging psychiatric disorder animal models can be conducted and generated by multiple gene manipulation methods.
The establishment of the animal psychiatric model by homologous recombination is to introduce the recombinant vector containing the target gene into embryonic stem cells, and the same fragment in the exogenous recombinant vector and embryonic stem cell will undergo homologous recombination.
Cre-Lox recombination is DNA modification or alteration to a specific cell type at specific sites, which is particularly useful to psychiatric disorder modeling.
Recombinant rabies virus is a negative-strand RNA virus that can be engineered to controlling gene expression or affecting neural activity without mutagenesis in the host.
The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas genome editing technology allows precise genetic manipulation of animals for psychiatric disorder modeling and related genetic studies.
Psychiatric Disorder Services at Creative Biolabs
An ideal model on a defined genetic background can always be the cornerstone of your research. As a pioneer and the undisputed global leader in the field of novel drug discovery, Creative Biolabs has won a good reputation in providing high-quality services and support for the development of psychiatric disorder animal models. Based on powerful solid technologies and years of experience, our professional scientists are glad to provide a range of tailored genetic manipulation strategies and services for psychiatric disorder modeling.
Please directly contact us, and communicate with us about your specific demands or ideas.
For Research Use Only.
