Automated Electrophysiology in Ion Channel Drug Discovery

Abstract

Ion channels - integral membrane proteins controlling ion flux across biological membranes - play fundamental roles in diverse physiological functions and many have been implicated in pathophysiological processes contributing to disease. Consequently they have become the focus of intense drug discovery efforts in the pharma and biotech industries. Despite some success in ion channel targeted drug discovery, it has generally been accepted in the field that a significant impediment to the discovery of novel agents targeting ion channels has been the lack of high throughput methods for studying compound effects on the electrophysiological properties of ion channels. In the last 10–15 years we have seen a dramatic evolution and broad implementation of a number of innovative technology platforms now capable of achieving the near same high quality recordings of ion channel function achieved using the gold standard, but extremely low throughput, technique of manual patch clamp electrophysiology. The use of these platforms in an integrated manner to support ion channel targeted drug discovery efforts is discussed here with a posit that this revolutionized modern day approach offers much promise for the future development of ion channel targeted therapeutics.