The Morris water maze -- An assessment of learning and memory in regulatory developmental and reproductive toxicology (DART) studies

SOT 2025 -- There are many water maze tasks that have been developed to evaluate learning and memory in regulatory DART studies. EPA OPPTS 870.6300 and OECD 426 test guidelines require an assessment of learning and memory on developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) studies for the testing of chemicals that may cause adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. ICH Harmonized Tripartite Guideline S5 (R3) for the testing of pharmaceuticals intended for human use also require an assessment of learning and memory to be evaluated in a complex learning task. Test guidelines such as the EPA OPPTS 870.6300 require evidence of positive control data to demonstrate the sensitivity of the procedures being used, ensuring  that the task is sensitive to detect learning impairments by using a chemical for which learning deficits have been established. This work was performed in order to validate and optimize the Morris water maze (MWM) to support preclinical safety studies utilizing the learning and memory assessment, thereby demonstrating that the learning and memory test procedure at Labcorp can detect chemically induced changes and therefore it’s suitability for use on regulatory DART studies.