Background

• Synaptic dysfunction is a common early event in neuro-degenerative diseases and age-associated cognitive decline.
• Despite a clear link between synaptic spines, synaptic connectivity, neuro-degeneration and neurodevelopmental diseases there remains a distinct lack of tools to assay such processes within modern drug discovery work-flows.
• Monitoring synaptic integrity in cultured neurons could serve as readout system for a variety of mental disorders (Figure 1). 
• Evotec has developed a drug discovery platform which uses state-of-the-art high content imaging technology for in vitro and ex vivo analysis of synapse number and structure. This platform can be used for target validation studies and also for compound profiling.