Automated Patch Clamping with CytoPatch™

CYTOENTRICS automated the Patch Clamp technique to speed up screening for new therapeutics.

CytoPatch™ accelerates the testing of compounds on ion channels at early phases in the drug discovery process and in safety pharmacology for the identification of novel leads and targets. The application of CytoPatch™ results in real gigaseals and whole cell recordings comparable to manual Patch Clamping.

The CytoPatch™ device contains up to 20 modules for parallel asynchronous operations. Each module has its own independent recording site with compound handling and Patch Clamp Amplifier.

The heart of the CytoPatch™ device is the patent-pending CytoPatch™ Chip. Unique is the use of two independent micro channels: while the CYTOCENTERING Channel is used for optimal positioning of cells towards the patch pipette, the CytoPatch™ Channel does the Patch Clamping and recording. This separation is favorable to a one channel solution because the CytoPatch™ Channel stays clean and allows excellent data generation.

Ligand gated ion channels can be addressed utilizing the laminar-flow compound application system and the flow-through perfusion system of the CytoPatch™, which guarantees fast and reliable solution exchange.

The CytoPatch™ Software offers predefined standard assays for the evaluation of voltage-gated and ligand-gated ion channels as well as a toolbox for convenient configuration of individual experiments.