Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder affecting approximately 1% of the general population, characterized by a constellation of positive, cognitive and negative symptoms. For preclinical animal research, investigators have established multiple modeling strategies including pharmacological manipulation, neurodevelopmental disruption, neurotoxic insult and transgenic modification to recapitulate behavioral alterations recapitulating core schizophrenia-related phenotypes, such as hyperlocomotion.

At PharmaLegacy, we have developed an MK-801-induced mouse model to mimic the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Spontaneous locomotor activity assays are adopted to validate the construct validity of this MK-801-driven schizophrenia model and evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of the reference drug Haloperidol. This platform lays a robust foundation for the pharmacodynamic assessment of novel drug candidates targeting schizophrenia in future research.

PharmaLegacy has completed the pharmacodynamic evaluation of xanomeline as a positive control drug against positive symptoms in the MK-801-induced schizophrenia mouse model. The results demonstrate that xanomeline significantly reverses MK-801-triggered hyperlocomotion in animals.