Ballerup, Denmark (September 18, 2006). Sophion Bioscience announces the launch of the QPatch HT, the world’s first 48-channel automated gigaseal patch clamp system.
Sophion takes automated patch clamp to a new and powerful level with the QPatch HT automated patch clamp system. This new system will be introduced at The Society for Biomolecular Sciences 12th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Seattle, Washington, USA September 17-21, 2006.
Designed by the same company that introduced the QPatch 16 in 2004, the QPatch HT extends the QPatch family of products while maintaining the core specialization in planar patch clamp technology, software, and high-quality amplifiers.
Ion channel screening experiments with the QPatch HT involve a 48-channel QPlate, with the same microfluidics as the original QPlate. This means that scientists in academia and pharmaceutical companies can obtain at least three-fold higher levels of patch clamp throughput with the same high-precision fluidics and high-quality recordings as with the QPatch 16. With three-fold higher throughput new screening paradigms will be enabled. For example it will be possible to apply QPatch HT for primary screening of smaller compound libraries, yielding unprecedented information content at an early stage in the screening cascade.
“Sophion is extremely pleased to introduce the QPatch HT to the drug discovery world,” said Dr. Torsten Freltoft, CEO and President of Sophion Bioscience. “We expect the QPatch HT to significantly fuel the revolution in ion channel drug discovery and safety testing initiated by the introduction of automated patch clamp systems.”
Sophion’s first product, QPatch 16, is a 16-channel automated patch clamp system already in use at many pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world for safety testing, ion channel screening and drug discovery programs. Automated patch clamp systems measure electrical currents in several cells at once, increasing the throughput compared to manual patch clamp dramatically. This increase in throughput allows researchers to screen more compounds faster albeit maintaining a similar degree of high quality biophysical information content to that for traditional manual patch clamp technologies.
About patch clamp & ion channels
The patch clamp method allows the measurement of very small electrical currents (~ 1 x 10-10 A) in single living cells. These currents reflect the movement of ion channel proteins opening and closing in the plasma membrane of cells. Specialized patch clamp amplifiers measure the flow of ions (e.g., K+ or Na+) through ion channels as electrical currents. All cells, and not just neuronal cells, use these electrical currents to regulate important cellular functions. Ion channels represent important pharmaceutical targets because of their involvement in nerve, muscle, heart and immune functions. These channels play a vital role in depression/anxiety, blood-pressure regulation, epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmias and other medical conditions. Ion channel proteins make excellent drug targets because they reside in the plasma membrane of cells and have segments in their pore regions, for example, that make them accessible to novel small molecules. Automated patch clamp machines, like the QPatch HT, allow pharmaceutical companies to pursue these ion channel targets in a reasonable amount of time and at an affordable cost in comparison to traditional manual patch clamp. For more information about the patch clamp technique and ion channels, please refer to the Sophion Bioscience website (www.sophion.com).
About Sophion Bioscience
Sophion Bioscience A/S was founded in July 2000, emerging from a successful research and development program at NeuroSearch. Sophion provides advanced products and integrated solutions for automated patch clamping.
For more information about Sophion Bioscience or the QPatch HT system, please contact:
Chris Mathes, Ph.D., VP, General Manager of Sophion Bioscience, Inc. (USA): cma@sophion.com (+1 732-586-1073) or
Torsten Freltoft, Ph.D., CEO & President of Sophion Bioscience A/S (DK):
tof@sophion.dk (+45 4460 8811) or
Frank Henrichsen, M.Sc., B.Com, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Sophion Bioscience A/S (DK): fhe@sophion.dk (+45 4460 8820)
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