Anyone for ICE screen?
drug discovery and development to detect the interaction of
compounds with ion channels.
Quintiles Transnational has launched a new screening technology to detect the interaction of drugs with ion channels.
Used to support both drug discovery and development, the Rapid ICE (Ion Channel Electrophysiology) system can screen for primary activity where an ion channel is the drug target and also for the early detection of potential cardiac side effects, such as arrhythmias. The assay work will be carried out at Quintiles' Preclinical research facility in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Rapid ICE is designed to help Quintiles' customers accelerate discovery projects, an arena in which ion channels are a target for an expanding number of novel drugs. To date, ion channel screening has been limited by the technology available to measure drug-channel interactions, according to the firm.
In the development arena, some marketed drugs have been found to produce life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, associated with a prolongation of the QT interval of the electrocardiogram (ECG). This has resulted in dosage restrictions and, in some cases, the costly withdrawal of products from the market.
There is considerable regulatory interest, in addition to pharmacoeconomic interest, in this side effect and whether it can be predicted. The block of the ion channel encoded by the human ether-a-go-go related gene (HERG) has been implicated in the arrhythmogenic effects of many different classes of drug molecules. The Rapid ICE system, which screens for drug interactions with the HERG channel, could result in significant savings certain drug development costs, claims Quintiles.
The system is based upon planar "patch on a chip" technology in which a high-resistance seal between a single cell and a pore within a chip are formed. This produces recordings of equivalent quality to the conventional, labour intensive patch clamping method, according to the company. The automated system developed by Axon Instruments is expected to increase productivity by generating over 100 times more data in comparison to conventional assays.
