CYTOPATCH™ - AUTOMATED PATCH CLAMPING

Recently ion channels received great attention as a target class for drug discovery. To meet the needs of the pharmaceutical industry in respect of high quality and high throughput an automated patch-clamping technique was shown first time at the SBS Conference and Exhibition (September, 21-25, 2003) in Portland, Oregon. The unique Cytocentering technique allows to perform automated patch clamping with suspended cells. The technique is comparable to the manual procedure and results in real gigaseal formation.

In the CytoPatch™ Chip, independent channels are used: the Cytocentering Channel for suction and positioning of cells and the CytoPatch™ Channel which is used for patch clamping and recording. The separation is advantageous because the CytoPatch™ Channel stays clean and allows a high rate of successful gigaseal formation.

The microstructure of the CytoPatch™ Chip consists of quartz glass and is embedded in a plastic housing where media, cells and compounds can be supplied microfluidically.

The CytoPatch™ Automat contains multiple CytoPatch™ Sites (1-20) for parallel asynchronous operation. With one CytoPatch™ Site it is possible to measure up to 100 cells a day. Thus ion cannel drug discovery has got a new powerful high throughput technique.