Self-administration

Self-administration studies measure the reinforcing effects of a drug (ie its ability to produce psychological dependence or craving). Animals will press a lever to self-administer a wide range of drugs that are liked and self-administered by recreational drug users but will not self-administer drugs that humans do not abuse. Self-administration studies therefore play a critical role in abuse liability testing because they provide a direct measure of the motivational or drug-seeking properties of novel drugs in man.

The technique involves allowing animals access to low training doses of an abusable drug eg cocaine administered intravenously until they show reproducible self-injection of the drug and no self-administration of vehicle. Test substances are then substituted for the training drug to determine whether they will maintain self-injection or not. The relative efficacy (reinforcing potential) of the novel compound versus suitable comparators (known reinforcers) can also be determined using progressive ratio schedules (the number of responses needed to acquire an injection is increased following each reinforcement until there is no longer a response).

RenaSci currently offers regulatory standard self-administration studies in liaison with world-renowned USA academic laboratories. Please contact us for further information.

We have also recently established self administration studies in rats in-house. For more information on our rat self-administration studies please click here