Grand challenge for ion channels: an underexploited resource for therapeutics

Diana Conte Camerino

doi:10.3389/fphar.2010.00113

Abstract

OPINION article Front. Pharmacol., 20 August 2010Sec. Pharmacology of Ion Channels and Channelopathies Volume 1 - 2010 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2010.00113

Highlights

It is widely acknowledged that research activity of the pharmaceutical community in ion channel field has been tremendously increasing in recent years (Conte Camerino et al, 2007). Such activity continues to investigate sectors traditionally covered by ion channel drugs, such as cardiovascular diseases, epilepsies, neuropathic pain, and diabetes
The discovery of ion channelopathies may be considered as a revolution for the study of ion channels, the third one after the pioneering work of Nobel prize-winning Hodgkin and Huxley in the 1950s, who have defined the basis for selective ion currents across the plasma membrane, and the invention of the patchclamp technique by Neher and Sakmann in the 1970s, Nobel prize in 1991, which allows to record any kind of ion channel activity in almost all cell types (Hodgkin and Huxley, 1952; Hamill et al, 1981)
The ion channelopathies can serve as paradigms to understand the more complex and frequent multifactorial diseases

Summary

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that research activity of the pharmaceutical community in ion channel field has been tremendously increasing in recent years (Conte Camerino et al, 2007). New calcium channel blockers, which constitute one of the major classes of therapeutic agents, have been identified by pharmacological and radiochemical techniques and largely studied by patch-clamp. Ion channelopathies are monogenic hereditary diseases due to mutations in genes encoding ion channel subunits (Conte Camerino et al, 2008).

Results

Conclusion