ChanTest to expand ion-channel screening
Ventures to enable the company to expand its library of ion
channel-expressing cell lines for drug screening.
The company has developed what it believes to be the world's largest catalogue of ion channel-expressing cell lines for use in drug discovery and development and this latest round of financing will add to the company's ability to further expand its already profitable screening services business. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the company believes that the deal will allow them to further expand the depth and breadth of their service offering. "We are seeing increased demand from pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers for our growing menu of specialized testing services," said Dr Arthur Brown, CEO of ChanTest. "This partnership with Ampersand brings financial resources and expertise that will help further expand the breadth and depth of our service offering, thereby enabling our customers to enhance and accelerate their drug discovery and development programs." There are more than 400 genes that encode for ion channels in the human genome and these represent either drug targets or unintended targets that can lead to unwanted cardiac side effects. These side effects can lead to impairment of cardiac repolarisation and a prolonging of the QT interval as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG). This has led regulatory agencies to recommend in vitro non-clinical test of all new drugs to check they do not impair the function of the heart, with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advising that all new drugs need to be evaluated for long QT using cloned ion channels as targets for pre-clinical studies. The company has arranged the cell lines into panels that test for activity according to tissue type or disease allowing pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to test the efficacy and selectivity of drug candidates and compound collections against the entire library or specific panels. This area of ion channel screening has received increasing attention from laboratory suppliers with Cresset, PerkinElmer and Invitrogen, Molecular Devices (now part of MDS Analytical) and BioFocus all offering various screening systems. According to the company, and independent market survey voted ChanTest "The World's Most Trusted Ion Channel Services Company" in both 2006 and 2007. "Since introducing the Channel Panel services last year, we have been very pleased with the market response, which we believe reflects the latent demand for this previously unavailable capability. We intend to continue expanding the number of Channel Panels, as well as pursuing other important innovations in this field," said Dr Brown.
