Patch Clamping goes automatic! Cytocentrics CCS GmbH-company directory :
The backbone of today's drug discovery is high-throughput screening. Ion channels are a major target for currently marketed and new drugs. However, high-sensitive technology for secondary screening and HTS is not yet available. This will soon be resolved by full automation of the gold standard gigaseal based patch-clamping technique.
High-quality patch-clamping has withstood automation by oversimplified "planar opening" approaches due to their inherently low yield of gigaohm seals. CYTOCENTRICS has succeed in high-yield gigaseal patch-clamping by sepa-rating the process of cell positioning and cell contacting by its unique CYTO-PATCHTM CHIP (patent pending).
CYTOCENTRICS and its outstanding partners excel in patch-clamp amplifier and high-speed multi-channel electronics, automation and BioMEMS large-volume production. CYTOCENTRICS is currently developing the CYTOPATCHTM AUTOMAT that provides high-throughput and high-quality whole-cell patch-clamping for ion channel drug discovery and functional genomics.
The company CYTOCENTRICS CCS GmbH has been founded in November 2001. It is situated in Reutlingen, Germany, and is a high-tech spin-off of the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tuebingen. On the basis of outstanding technological innovations and pending patents, CYTO-CENTRICS will provide an enabling technology platform for automated electro-physiology (Patch-Clamping) and cell-by-cell assays for high-content screening to assist drug screening for ion channel targets.
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