With the high throughput and recording fidelity of Qube, it was possible to characterize the ion channel populations in iPSC-derived cortical neurons. 60-70% of cells expressed Nav-current and 60-80% expressed Kv-current. Biophysical as well as pharmacological tools were employed to characterize these currents and the phenotypes were compared between a CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder and isogenic control. Click here to see the poster.
The Kv1.5 channel is found in many tissues and is the molecular background behind Ikur in the heart – contributing to the heart’s repolarisation. If it does not work well, you can die. However, blocking this channel pharmacologically might treat various heart arrhythmias so, therefore, it can be beneficial to screen for that, so we have developed an HTS assay for this target. Read more here.
If you are curious to know more about Sophions’ APC robots and their use in industry and academia, please read Artem Kondratskyis’ interview with our ur VP R&D and MKTG, Thomas Binzer which can be found online on the ionchannellibrary.com.
An interview about automated patch clamp, academic collaborations and why we are using all those Qs in our names.
In July, Eurofins acquired a Qube 384, which was installed shortly after. As always, the selection process was lengthy and thorough to ensure that Eurofins selected the instrument that provided the best voltage clamp, success rates and unattended usage. After careful consideration, the group selected the Sophion Bioscience Qube 384. The instrument installation went smoothly, and the staff was able to handle the setup and execution of experiments after just one week of installation and training.
The Scientific Director at Eurofins, Bryan Koci, explains:
“We made a thorough comparison in the field of 384-APC’s and selected Qube 384 for its high performance and design, where everything is integrated and user-friendly. Being in the midst of unusual times because of the global impact of Covid-19, at Eurofins, our primary concern is our commitments to deliver to our clients and the safety of our employees and their families. We believe an extra benefit of the Qube 384 platform is that it can run mostly unattended, without significant intervention from the staff, allowing a safer work environment for our employees while continuing to provide uninterrupted services for clients. The Qube384 platform is an exciting addition to Eurofins Discovery’s comprehensive ion channel screening services and we are looking forward to providing high-quality, high throughput, screening data on Qube 384 to our clients in the near future.”
Qube Falcon has been released and with that a range of upgrades to continue help finding better drugs faster. Since Eagle, Qube has had adaptive protocols which enables cell-specific recording to obtain much tighter data. Now the adaptive protocols have been more now flexible to cover the whole range from 10-90 % activation/inactivation. The cell-specific result can also be applied to both recording segments and to holding potentials.
Falcon can run idle sweep. These are the sweeps between one compound period and the next and gives more homogenous stimulation frequency of the cells and consequently compound effects.
Qube has sophisticated mechanisms to compensate for series resistance, capacitance and leak and with Falcon, we have faster computers to calculate all these parameters in parallel for all 384 amplifiers in only a little more than 4 seconds. Previously it took almost 10 seconds. The improvement means you can e.g. run CiPA hERG protocols with parameter estimation between every sweep.
Qube is a high fidelity automated patch clamp instrument meant to run unattended, for example during the night, and therefore it can also automatically match the barcodes/compound lists your screen and add results and analyzed them automatically in projects.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information and both virtual and real-life demonstrations where you get to run the instrument yourself after just a few hours of introduction – that is namely all it takes to safely and error-free handling of an instrument from Sophion.
Charles River has presented how Qube with adaptive protocols gets tighter data on their Nav1.x panel when testing state-dependent sodium channel blockers. The performance was as good as with standard protocols but with 384 individual protocols, the modulatory effects of local anaesthetics were detected more reliably. Please click here to see the poster.