ICE Bioscience is one of the earliest suppliers to specialize in ion channel target screening. We have currently established drug screening platforms for more than 100 ion channel targets, developing stable cell lines for ion channels that rank among the best in the industry. We have also achieved unique success in addressing challenging targets, assisting dozens of new candidates in advancing to the clinical research stage.
Our ion channel screening services include using patch clamp to study ionic currents and real-time Fluorometric Imaging Plate Reader technology (FLIPR) to record intracellular calcium concentrations, potassium ion concentrations, or changes in cell membrane potential. These assays can be conducted in primary cells, iPSC-induced differentiated cells, stable transfected cell lines, and transiently transfected cells. Our advantage lies in having both high-throughput screening technologies like FLIPR and QPatch, as well as traditional techniques such as manual patch clamp, providing a range of options to meet the diverse needs of our customers, with fast and high-quality data delivery.
- Automated Patch Clamp – Voltage Gated
- Automated Patch Clamp – Ligand Gated
- Calcium & Potassium Flux
- Membrane Potential
There are numerous types of ion channels, each playing a critical role in various physiological processes. At our facility, we offer a comprehensive range of services tailored to meet the diverse needs of ion channel research. Our expertise extends to testing of a wide range of ion channel targets, ensuring that we can accommodate and support research at all stages of your drug discovery and safety profiling needs.
ICE Bioscience also offers a comprehensive suite of validated panels for profiling ion channel selectivity to support therapeutic area research and risk assessment.
✅ High-Quality, Stable Data: We have extensively explored various testing conditions for each ion channel target, optimizing them to ensure that our data aligns with the literature and maintains stability and repeatability.
✅ Professional Technical Team: Over the past decade, we have cultivated a large team of highly skilled and technically proficient technicians, ensuring the stability of our operations.
✅ Custom Services: We assist customers in developing assay protocols and offer tailored services to meet unique needs.
✅ Fast Delivery, High Throughput: We provide both Gold Standard manual patch clamp assays, automated patch clamp assays and FLIPR assays to accommodate precision and screening throughput requirements from our customers. Our expertise enables us to offer cost-effective and prompt delivery services.
Ion Channel Functional Services
Through profiling on ion channel targets, not only can the potential efficacy of compounds be assessed, but also the risk of off-target effects can be determined. For example, the inhibition of the human ether-a-go-go (hERG) potassium ion channel, a member of this family, is responsible for one form of familial long QT syndrome, a potentially deadly inherited cardiac disorder associated with TdP.
Manual patch clamp has long been regarded as the "gold standard" for recording single-cell currents and was previously widely used in CNS (central nervous system) research. Due to our accumulated expertise over the past decade, we have reduced the TAT to just 1-2 weeks, saving our customers valuable time in screening.
The advantages of automated patch clamp technology lie in its ability to achieve high-throughput screening of compounds, addressing the limitations of traditional manual patch clamp, which required highly skilled operators and had lower throughput. This technology meets the high-throughput screening demands of our customers in drug development.
The Fluorometric Imaging Plate Reader (FLIPR) system, as a tool for monitoring ion channel or GPCR targets, plays crucial roles in drug discovery. We utilize the new FLIPR® Penta High-Throughput Cellular Screening System to
- Observe real-time membrane potential changes associated with ion channel activation and ion transporter proteins
- Observe calcium flux to assess cardiotoxicity in the early stages of drug discovery
- Measure functional activity of ligand- and voltage-gated potassium channels
- Measure the change of global intracellular calcium, in response to the activation of ion channels
FLIPR also offers high-throughput capabilities, allowing for compound screening in 96-well or 384-well plates at a time, enabling high-throughput screening.
Workflow of FLIPR assays.
Pharmacology data for reference compounds on FLIPR Penta.
