New York, May 28th - Creative Bioarray, the world’s leading biotechnology products and services provider, recently announced that its advanced Electrophysiological Technique for screening ion channel function and regulation.
Ion channels are essential membrane proteins that regulate the flux of ions through the cell membrane. They are involved in almost all physiological processes, and the breakdown of ion channels is related to many diseases. Until recently, high-throughput screening of ion channels was limited to indirect, such as fluorescence-based readout techniques. In the past few years, direct label-free biophysical readout technology through electrophysiology has been developed. Flat patch-clamp electrophysiology provides direct, non-functional readings of medium to high-throughput ion channel functions. Other electrophysiological functions including temperature control and high-throughput instruments are also under continuous development. This article will focus on the latest advances in electrophysiological techniques that can be used to screen ion channel function and regulation.
Electrophysiological screening in 384-well format has recently become possible. Advances in chip and microfluidic design and cell preparation and processing have made it possible to study challenging cell types through automated patch clamps. Automated patch clamps have successfully established methods for measuring action potential in stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (related to cardiac safety screening) and neuronal cells, as well as a large number of different ion channels (including fast ligand-gated ion channels). Impedance and multi-electrode array measurements are particularly suitable for studying cardiomyocytes and neuronal cells in their physiological networks and solving more complex physiological problems. In the past few years, direct label-free biophysical techniques for screening ion channels by electrophysiology have been developed. These functions enable functional high-throughput screening of ion channels, and even in their cellular environment, they can gain insight into the function and regulation of ion channels.
For high-throughput screening, indirect readout techniques (such as fluorometry) are still used, and they are combined with electrophysiological patch-clamp compound characterization in the later stages of compound development. The need to maintain high-resolution data acquisition while increasing the electrophysiological screening throughput, however, requires the introduction of new patch clamp devices with higher throughput.
Patch-clamp technology is widely used to measure ion channel function in different cell preparations. When using an automatic patch-clamp system, it is usually performed on isolated single cells. To address the next more complex hierarchical structure of tissue structure, electrophysiological impedance measurement and multi-electrode arrays have proven to be particularly useful. These techniques allow the study of cells within their physiological network.
Through directly providing readings for the mechanical pulsation of cardiomyocytes, label-free impedance technology has the potential to bridge the gap between direct cardiac ion channel patch clamp measurements on the one hand and animal models on the other. This is particularly relevant to cardiac safety assessment, which is an important part of the drug discovery and development process. Although the interpretation of impedance data from heart cells is complex, they may provide relevant information about the action of compounds, especially for compounds with multiple isolated ion channel effects.
About Creative Bioarray
Founded in 2005, Creative Bioarray is dedicated to offering customers with innovative biotechnology products and services for research use to greatly enhance and drive innovation and standards in science. As a well-recognized industry leader with more than 10 years of experience and in-house experts supported, Creative Bioarray has already countenanced research all around the world.