CRO for CNS Drug Development
Although QPS is complying with all government regulations for social distancing and allowing employees who can, to work from home, QPS Neuropharmacology is up and running. Please feel free to contact us any time to discuss your research needs.
Welcome to QPS Neuropharmacology
QPS Neuropharmacology is the division of QPS that focuses on preclinical studies in CNS diseases, Rare Diseases and Mental Disorders. The on-site availability of highly predictive disease models and unparalleled experience with studies performed for biopharmaceutical companies of all sizes makes QPS Neuropharmacology the first choice for most CNS drug development needs.
Validated transgenic and non-transgenic in vitro and in vivo models cover most targets of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), Parkinson’s Disease (PD), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Niemann-Pick Disease (NPC1), Gaucher Disease, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Schizophrenia, Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD) and other neurodegenerative and rare diseases.
QPS is a global contract research organization (CRO) providing discovery, preclinical and clinical drug development services since 1995. Our mission is to accelerate pharmaceutical breakthroughs across the globe by delivering custom-built research services. An award-winning leader in the CRO industry, QPS is known for proven quality standards, technical expertise, a flexible approach to research, client satisfaction and turnkey laboratories and facilities.
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Why Choose Us?
- Customer satisfaction is our absolute priority
- Your timeline is our timeline
- Every study is custom-built
- Scientific input to study design and data interpretation
- Extensive experience with virtually all drug targets and treatment types
- Wide range of validated models and techniques for comprehensive compound tests from a single source
- AAALAC certification ensures highest quality standards
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Special Diet-induced Mouse Models
People’s diet can strongly influence their health and wellbeing. Certain diet ingredients can even affect the onset and progression of some diseases. Feeding mice with a special diet can therefore be used to analyze the effect of a diet or dietary component on typical disease pathologies. Depending on the genetic background of mice used for the feeding study, the diet can be utilized to induce for example features of the metabolic syndrome such as obesity and insulin resistance or atherosclerosis but also to affect the pathology of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease transgenic mice.
Wild type or transgenic mice are fed with the diet of your choice – for instance with a Western-type, high/low fat, or high fructose/sucrose diet. Animals can be analyzed depending on your research question for the following readouts:
In vivo:
- Body weight
- Food consumption (caloric intake or consumed dietary components such as fat)
- In vivo blood sampling
- Gut transit time
- Glucose tolerance
- Activity and motor abilities
- Nesting Behavior
- Cognition
- BBB permeability by Evans Blue test (terminal)
Ex vivo:
- Preparation and analysis of different tissues, including various fat or gastrointestinal tissues
- Inflammation marker levels (cytokines) by MesoScale Discovery
- Serum lipid profile (LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides)
- Disease-specific markers (Aβ, tau, p-tau, α-synclein)
- Preparation of Swiss roll of intestines and further analyses for PGP9.5 to mark enteric neurons, Vimentine to mark mesenchymal cells including fibroblasts, Leukocyte infiltration, B- and T-cell marker (B220/CD45R, CD3) & Monocytes/Macrophages (F4/80, CD68, CD11b, Iba1)
- Or any marker of your choice
Figure 1: Immunofluorescent and H&E labeling of the colon of a wild type mouse fed with Western-type diet. Intestines were prepared as Swiss roll and labeled with PGP9.5 to visualize enteric neurons and vimentine to mark mesenchymal cells including fibroblast in the colon. Sections were counterstained with DAPI for visualization of cell nuclei. AF: Autofluorescence. Scale bar: 100 µm. H&E staining of the colon proving a structural overview of the tissue.