Cellectricon’s Dynaflow™ Pro II System for cost-effective high - throughput electrophysiology

The gold standard technique for obtaining high content information on ion channel function is the patch-clamp method. Unfortunately, patch clamp suffers from serious throughput restrictions due to its laborious nature, and has thus become a bottleneck in the ion channel drug discovery process.

Therefore, large efforts have been made in developing parallel patch-clamp devices that aim to automate and multiplex the number of patch-clamped cells with the purpose of increasing the throughput. Although the automated patch clamp devices indeed offer an increased rate of compound testing, this improvement unfortunately comes at a price, being reduced recording quality, and loss of flexibility and control during the experiment. Consequently, the need for high-throughput electrophysiology systems enabling screening of all types of ion channels at low cost while still maintaining the high information content offered by classic patch clamp screening is growing at a rapid pace.

Dynaflow™ provides a solution to the current need of a functionalion channel assay with a dramatic throughput increase.

Dynaflow™ Pro II system is a computer controlled microfluidic chip-based system for patch-clamp-based ion channel drug screening. In essence, Dynaflow Pro II transforms a traditional patch-clamp setup into an easy-to-use high throughput electrophysiology system. The main benefit of this approach is that the excellent data quality of traditional patch-clamp is retained while increasing the throughput to a level similar to parallel patchclamp systems. DynaflowTM enables novel ion channel experiments and offers less cost per data point since it gives uncompromised and pharmacologically relevant data at a high throughput.

It also dramatically reduces the amount of reagent needed for testing. Consequently, the system is ideally suited for assays in the drug discovery process where optimal data quality really is essential, for example lead optimization and hERG testing.

“At AstraZeneca we have continued to invest in multiple Dynaflow systems because we find this to be the most flexible, increased throughput ion channel assay systems for use in whole-cell recording. It has allowed us to run experiments and screen compounds on ion channel targets not possible before the arrival of this system and at a throughput previously inconceivable on these targets. We view the Dynaflow as an excellent investment and look forward to more ion channel screening products from Cellectricon.” (Dr. Edwin C. Johnson, Director, CNS/Pain Research Area & Head, Target Biology Department at AstraZeneca R&D, Wilmington, Delaware, USA)