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US 7,611,850 B2Granted
Ion channel assay methods
AssigneeVertex Pharmaceuticals (San Diego) LLC
InventorsMichael P. Maher, Jesus E. Gonzalez, III
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of characterizing the biological activity of a candidate compound may include exposing cells to the candidate compound, and then exposing the cells to a repetitive application of electric fields so as to set the transmembrane potential to a level corresponding to a pre-selected voltage dependent state of a target ion channel.
Claims7
A method of screening a plurality of drug candidate compounds against a target ion channel comprising:
- expressing said target ion channel in a population of host cells;
- placing a plurality of said host cells into each of a plurality of sample wells;
- adding a candidate drug compound to at least one of said plurality of sample wells;
- and
- modulating the transmembrane potential of host cells in said plurality of sample wells with a repetitive application of electric fields produced with extracellular electrodes so as to set said transmembrane potential to a level corresponding to a pre-selected voltage dependent state of said target ion channel, wherein said electric fields cause an ion channel of interest to open.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.