Innovative assays for neurodegeneration drug discovery programs

Live webinar 28 April 2022

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by neuronal damage, degradation of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and failures in the normal repair mechanisms of the brain. Many of the most promising areas of drug development in this field target two key processes: neuroinflammation and remyelination. Microglia and astrocytes are key to neuroinflammation. Oligodendrocytes are responsible for remyelination.

In this webinar Dr Elise Malavasi will describe how you can implement a cascade of robust assays with these key cell types, to help understand the biological effects of your novel drugs. Whether you’re interested in primary cells, cell lines or human-derived iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells), assays can be tailored to specific research questions. We will also describe how an organotypic slice culture model can be used to assess your drug in a more complex system, before moving to in vivo studies.

We will use the example of multiple sclerosis as a case-study of a neurodegenerative disease, and you will learn about assays for:

· Microglial/astrocyte activation and polarization

· Microglial phagocytosis and migration

· Oligodendrocyte differentiation

· Inflammasome activation (ex vivo)

· Remyelination (ex vivo and In vivo)

· CNS ADMET in vitro screening assays

You can register for free to all our webinars and you will automatically receive the On-Demand version