When a stroke occurs, cerebral ischemia or hemorrhage impairs central nervous system function, causing a range of neurological deficits that primarily affect sensory-motor and coordination functions. In addition, higher cortical brain areas may be affected, and as a result, memory deficits and other cognitive deficits often occur. Effective treatments are urgently needed. Rodents are excellent models for exploring the understanding and effects of stroke, as well as many other neurological injuries, in humans. In addition to histological measurements, behavioral testing of animal models for the biological basis of experimental stroke and potential rehabilitation efforts can provide valuable insights.
Fig. 1. Illustration of commonly used behavioral tests in rodent models of stroke. (Ruan et al., 2020)
At Ace Therapeutics, we continue to innovate and provide behavioral testing services to assess behavioral changes in animal stroke models, such as motor dysfunction, sensory deficits, cognitive deficits, and mood disorders.
Our team of experts has extensive experience in animal behavioral testing. Our extensive expertise allows for a flexible, customized combination of behavioral testing, histological measurements, and real-time in vivo imaging to provide a comprehensive, translatable in vivo pharmacodynamics service package for your stroke therapy development.
Stroke may cause changes in the pain threshold, so pain sensory testing can be used as one of the functional outcome parameters. We offer a variety of sensory tests to assess pain sensitivity, including mechanical allodynia, thermal hyperalgesia, and cold hyperalgesia tests.
Rodents exhibit a wide range of sensorimotor deficits after stroke similar to human patients. Ace Therapeutics offers highly customized motor behavior tests in stroke animal models to meet specific neuroscientific needs, including Bederson scores, modified neurologic severity scores (mNSS), open field test, pole test, foot-fault test, cylinder test, corner test, adhesive removal test, rotarod test, wire hanging test, skilled reaching tasks test, etc.
Cognition involves a variety of important neural functions, including memory and emotion. Ace Therapeutics offers a wide range of behavioral tests to assess cognition function in rodents, including Morris water maze, Y-maze, new object recognition rest, radial-arm test, etc. We can successfully detect changes in cognition, learning, and memory in rodent models of stroke, allowing cognitive testing to measure and quantify the efficacy of novel compounds and pharmacological interventions on cognition.
Identifying behavioral and pharmacological interventions that improve recovery from stroke injury is a fundamental part of stroke research. Ace Therapeutics offers comprehensive behavioral testing services to assess neurological outcomes in animal stroke models. If you are interested in our services, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Ace Therapeutics is a global leading provider of stroke research services. We are committed to accelerating progress in stroke research and drug development.