Intravenous Self-Administration

The intravenous (i.v.) self-administration has become the “gold standard” in preclinical assessment of abuse liability and is a primary method recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in screening novel compounds. At Creative Biolabs, we have successfully established this widely used animal model of abuse potential to provide preclinical evaluation and screening services to the clients.

Introduction of Intravenous Self-Administration (SA)

To determine whether the compound will be self-administered is a key component of the preclinical abuse liability assessment. The goal of self-administration is to assess the ability of the drug to serve as a reinforcer, which determines whether drug delivery maintains behavior at a meaningfully higher rate than does in the control (usually vehicle delivery). This intravenous self-administration model is seen as valid because most drugs that are abused in humans are self-administered by laboratory animals, and most drugs that are not self-administered by laboratory animals are not abused by humans.

In this procedure, rats are trained to self-administer a drug of abuse (e.g., nicotine, cocaine) by lever-pressing in an operant box. Once rats exhibit stable drug intake, the training drug is substituted with a testing compound. If the testing compound is self-administered, this indicates potential drug abuse liability. A more rigorous assessment is to test the novel compound in rats that have no prior drug experience (drug-naïve rats). If it supports the acquisition of self-administration as well, then there's even stronger evidence for the abuse liability of the novel compound.

The Features of Intravenous Self-Administration (SA)

• One of the main advantages of self-administration is the unambiguous interpretation of reinforced behavior. If an intact, unperturbed animal emits a response to obtain delivery of the compound, the agent is assumed to be rewarding.
• Another advantage of the SA procedure is predictive validity. There are very few examples of therapeutic compounds that support self-administration that are not abused, or that are abused but do not support self-administration.
• The i.v. route has the advantages that delivery of drug to the CNS is almost immediate. However, the solubility characteristics of a test compound may unduly restrict the range of doses that can be examined in i.v. administration within reasonable parameters of drug delivery duration and volume.

Creative Biolabs provides highly customizable behavioral models of drug abuse. We can tailor the study protocols and add parameters to a particular project to suit the clients' needs. For a comprehensive assessment of drug abuse potential, Creative Biolabs also provides other assays:

• Conditioned Place Preference
• Drug Discrimination
• Drug Dependence Liability/Withdrawal Test
• Locomotor Sensitization

As an undisputed specialist in neurological disease drug development, Creative Biolabs has an extensive range of rodent neurological disease models for drug efficacy studies:

Contact us if you need more information about this procedure or a formal quotation.

For Research Use Only.