Sophion Bioscience launches QPatch Compact upgrade with temperature control and a range of new functionalities
Today, Sophion Bioscience launches an upgraded QPatch® Compact, our semi-automated patch clamp solution, now offering full temperature control, light pipetting guidance, adaptive current clamp, and a range of new functionalities to increase your experiment performance. The bench-top QPatch Compact allows you to perform gigaseal ion channel recordings in up to 8 cells asynchronously in parallel with minimum set-up and maintenance required.
Among the new functionalities of the upgraded QPatch Compact are:
Full temperature control to ensure a stable and consistent test environment
During experiments, it is crucial to keep the recording site temperature controlled. Thereby, you can minimize disturbing temperature effects. Controlling the temperature at the testing site ensures increased assay repeatability and reproducibility. With Sophion’s water-based temperature control system, each measurement site is kept at a consistent temperature. The new temperature control functionality is integrated into the upgraded QPatch Compact software, and the readouts are automatically saved and can be used for future analysis.
Light pipetting guidance for easy and guided pipetting
When using QPatch Compact, the timing of pipetting into each test site is crucial in order to achieve the best results. With the new light guidance, the user is provided a visual pipetting aid during the experiment. It is now indicated with different colors when the user should get ready, and when to dispense into each test site. In addition, audio can be activated along with the light guidance to support the user.
New unique Sophion adaptive current clamp
Using current clamp can be challenging due to the cell-to-cell variability and the variation of the resting membrane potential of each cell. Therefore, it is difficult to design a current clamp protocol that is suitable for all cells. Sophion’s new unique adaptive current clamp feature automatically measures and applies a unique current value to each cell, which is then applied to the rest of the assay. This means that each cell is interrogated independently, analyzed online, and automatically exposed to individual current injections. As a result, relevance is improved leading to higher success rates.
Additional new functionalities with the upgraded QPatch Compact
In addition to the new functionalities included in the upgraded QPatch Compact, there are several other improvements:
- The improved GUI makes it easier to record on all 8 channels asynchronously in parallel
- Easy assignment of compounds/protocols to all sites in one action
- Optimization of the user interface for increased simplicity and intuition
- User-enabled audio pipetting guidance
- Hardware and software updates to ensure robustness during intended use and transportation
With the new functionalities and improvements added to QPatch Compact, you can improve your performance on the instrument, including providing increased data reproducibility, recording at temperatures outside RT range, supporting a broader application range, and achieving a better overall user experience.