Zebrafish Technologies
We have a CPCSEA approved zebrafish facility which can provide several screening and custom-made studies for drug discovery and development programs. Zebrafish have genetically conserved drug receptor binding domains with humans, making the results highly predictable in drug discovery programs which is instrumental to decrease drug attrition rate at a very early phase. The zebrafish assays help save on time and require only microgram quantities of compound. Multiple compounds can be simultaneously screened making the assays high to medium throughput to enable us to screen drug series/libraries. The Piramal Healthcare Research Centre uses zebrafish technologies to evaluate the druggability of compounds with respect to their safety-efficacy in order to facilitate the compound selection process in early drug discovery.
Capabilities:
- Toxicity assays in zebrafish
- Cardiovascular toxicity
- Heart rate evaluation
- Effect on cardiac morphology
- Drug induced cardiac apoptosis
- Developmental cardiac deformities
- Effect on cardiac circulation
- Developmental toxicity and teratogenicity assay
- Acute drug toxicity assay in compliance with OECD guidelines
- Gut motility assay
- Disease models
- Angiogenesis
- Tumour induced angiogenesis and non-tumor induced angiogenesis model
- Cancer
- Xenotransplantation models custom-made as per cell line requested
- Apoptosis
- Whole animal toxicity
- Organ specific toxicity
- Kidney models
- Cystic kidney disorders
We can conduct further mechanism of action studies and offer disease specific “integrated risk assessments” for candidate selection in drug discovery.
- Nanoparticle safety and efficacy assessment assays
Tuberculosis Assays
At the Piramal Healthcare Research Centre, we have CPCSEA and Biosafety committee approved BSL-3 facility for handling preclinical models of tuberculosis (Drug sensitive as well as drug resistant strains). Tuberculosis affects almost 3-4 million people world wide requiring about a year of arduous chemotherapy associated with untoward drug effects. The primary mode of infection is infected aerosol inhalation. On the lines of its natural mode of infection, we have preclinical models of tuberculosis infection set-up by the aerosol route. The preclinical models of tuberculosis include guinea pigs as well as mice. Infection model set-up by injection route is also available. These models can be used to evaluate drug testing for efficacy in drug sensitive and drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis. Treatment modalities with oral, intravenous as well as inhalation route are available with us. Aerosols can be administered via nose-only as well as oro-nasal modalities. Further custom-designed studies to aid tuberculosis drug development are feasible at our end. We are also equipped to evaluate any other disease model of deep lung infections using aerosol route.