Importance of abuse liability assessment for novel neuropsychiatric drugs and new recreational drugs.
Aims:
- To develop, validate and transfer a model for abuse liability assessment: drug discrimination, i.e. the study of discrimination of drug-induced interoceptive effects.
The discriminative stimulus induced by a substance is correlated to its subjective effects: if these are similar to those of a drug of abuse, there is a similar abuse liability.
Project’s motivations:
- Limited expertise at National and European levels;
- Needs of an applied research service;
- Opportunity for innovative basic research.
Project’s phases:
- Methodological development in rats;
- Behavioural validation;
- Pharmacological validation;
- --- Technological transfer ---;
- Abuse liability research for new substances.
Two-year project outcome:
- Completion development and validation;
- Completion technological transfer;
- Starting research activity on new recreational drugs.
Return-of-investment:
- Industrial unit: translation to scale-up for R&D;
- Academic unit: technological know-how acquisition
