Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive and fatal motor neuron disease characterized by quickly progressing muscle weakness, muscle atrophy, fasciculations, and spasticity. Degeneration of the upper and lower motor neurons of the spinal cord is the main cause for the observed progressive motor decline in humans. The development of new ALS drugs halting the neurodegenerative process is therefore the main goal of ALS research.
Scantox currently offers several ALS mouse models featuring different properties related to the transgene and copy number. These animals focus on different pathological readouts such as SOD1 and TDP-43 and constitute suitable models to study the influence of drugs on ALS pathology.
Scantox offers a custom-tailored study design for these ALS models, and we are flexible to accommodate to your special interests. We are also happy to advice you and propose study designs. Scantoxy maintains its own breeding colonies for most of these models directly in our research facility. Non-transgenic littermates are available as control animals needed for proper study design.
We would be happy to test your compounds in these mouse models! Readouts depend on model but the most common are:
- Muscle weakness and motor deficits
- Cognitive deficits
- Reduced survival
- Neuroinflammation
- Neurodegeneration
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Scantox is also ready to provide samples (brain tissue, CSF etc.) of some of these models for analyses in your laboratory.