title: New strategies in ion channel screening for drug discovery: are there ways to improve its productivity?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  From a drug discovery point of view, ion channels are very interesting and challenging targets. Over the past decade, great efforts have been made in developing platforms for patch clamp-based high-quality screening of ion channels in discovering new drug candidates as well for evaluating their safety profiles. Indeed, the automated patch clamp (APC) has recently reached the data throughput requirements of high-throughput screening (HTS) allowing for new screening strategies with ion channel active compounds.
  
  
  METHODS
  This editorial article comments on the past and present developments of APC-based drug screening. Furthermore, it also looks at the implications of APC technology meeting HTS-standards as well as its use in compound safety evaluation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In the imminent future, we will see a paradigm shift in ion channel drug screening toward using APC-based platforms for primary drug library screens. This way, the redundancy of the drug discovery process and the risk of false-negatives could be drastically reduced. Furthermore, cardiac safety can be addressed early, avoiding late-phase withdrawals with promising drug candidates. It is our firm belief that APC-based ion channel HTS will facilitate the discovery of candidates, which otherwise would have not been found, and shorten the drug development cycle, saving time and cost.
authors: Nanion Technologies , Gabrirelenstrasse 9, 80636 München , Germany info@nanion.de.
authors: Cecilia
authors: C
authors: Farre
authors: Niels
authors: N
authors: Fertig
mesh_terms: D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays; D006801:Humans; D007473:Ion Channels / Q000378:metabolism*; D018408:Patch-Clamp Techniques; D018675:Toxicity Tests
chemical_list: D007473:Ion Channels
keywords: automated patch clamp; drug discovery; high-throughput screening; ion channel screening