High throughput ion channel screening

Swedish biotech tools company Cellectricon says it has now received orders from three of the top five pharmaceutical companies for its Dynaflow microfluidic chip technology for increasing productivity in the drug discovery process.

Cellectricon signed its first order for the product, with AstraZeneca, in the spring, and says it is planning a large-scale launch for the product this month.

Dynaflow is a high-throughput screening technology for drugs targeting ion channels and can screen several hundred compounds acting on ligand- and voltage gated ion channels every day. Using current approaches, a laboratory would ordinarily get through only around 10 screenings a day. Moreover, Cellectricon claims that the data generated using its product are better than that which can be achieved using conventional patch clamping techniques.

Cellectricon​ specialises in developing microfabricated cell-based tools for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The company was formed in 2000 based on an extensive and solid patent portfolio within different areas such as high-throughput electrophysiology, patch clamping, microfluidics, microfabrication and electroporation.