ChanTest Introduces New Ion Channel and GPCR Assays for Drug Discovery and Preclinical Safety at ELRIG 2010

ChanTest will be featuring new ion channel and GPCR cell-based assays for screening and profiling, along with additions to the company’s leading preclinical cardiac safety services at the ELRIG meeting in September.

Drug Discovery
For ion channel drug discovery, the company has recently introduced cost-effective, transiently-transfected EZCells™ TT reagents for screening and profiling. This addition expands the EZCells™ portfolio to over 80 ion channel targets in a convenient ready-to-use format, and represents significant savings compared to the purchase or development of stable cell lines. Custom development options are available for unique or tissue-specific combinations of pore-forming and modulatory subunits.

The new GPCR-CNG assays contain a proprietary exogenous Cyclic Nucleotide-Gated (CNG) channel which is activated by elevated intracellular levels of cAMP resulting in ion flux and cell membrane depolarization. They are a powerful deorphanizing tool to help study novel receptors and are compatible with single-cell imaging platforms for high-content analysis and multiplexing.

Cardiac Safety Assessments
Human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (SC-hCMs) provide a significant improvement over current methodologies to study a compound’s effect on ion channels in human ventricular-type myocytes, cells which are not typically available for routine safety testing. ChanTest has developed sensitive, rapid and cost-effective SC-hCM-based screening assays that offer distinct advantages over non-human models. SC-hCM services include:

• SC-hCM Action Potential (AP) Assay
• NEW SC-hCM Action Potential Duration Screen
• NEW ICa,L Assay

The SC-hCM AP Assay is a critical element of ChanTest’s Thorough Safety Package, a group of in vitro and in vivo assays designed to provide nearly 100% preclinical cardiac risk predictivity. ChanTest has been recognized as “the most trusted and most used ion channel services company” in independent surveys.

Visit booth E9 for more information.