A new collaborative research program started in October 2022 between Neuroservices-Alliance, OptoPath & INSERM: under this partnership, Dana Conlisk, PhD, started working on developing new assays in the fields of anxiety and Opium Use Disorder.
The first project, under the supervision of Dr Cyril Herry, focuses on preclinical models of anxiety. It explores how relevant electrophysiological biomarkers (measured through local field potentials in multiple brain regions) of anxiety-like behaviors are affected by currently used anxiolytic compounds.
In the future, these findings will be used as a basis to see how these biomarkers of anxiety change with administration of new anxiolytic drugs as they are developed, and how they compare to treatments that are currently used for anxiety disorders.
The second project, under the supervision of Dr Veronique Deroche, focuses on preclinical models of Opium Use Disorder. It explores how dopaminergic signaling after fentanyl dependence changes with administration of currently used opioid agonist therapies during behavioral tests that are able to identify problematic drug seeking behaviors.
The future of this project will be to explore how dopaminergic signaling changes as a function of administration of new pharmacological compounds that aim to eliminate the problematic drug seeking behaviors associated with problematic opioid use. An additional benefit will be that we can compare the efficacy of these new compounds to treatments that are currently used in the clinic both behaviorally (by reducing problematic drug seeking) and through differences in dopaminergic signaling.
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