Mathes Chris
Sophion Bioscience, Inc., 675 US Highway One, North Brunswick, NJ 08902, USA.
Expert Opin Ther Targets. 2006 Apr;10(2):319-27. doi: 10.1517/14728222.10.2.319.
The QPatch 16 significantly increases throughput for gigaseal patch clamp experiments, making direct measurements in ion channel drug discovery and safety testing feasible. Released to the market in the Autumn of 2004 by Sophion Bioscience, the QPatch originated from work done at NeuroSearch (Denmark) in the early days of automated patch clamp. Today, the QPatch provides many unique features. For example, only the QPatch includes an automated cell preparation station making several hours of unattended operation possible. The 16-channel electrode array, called the QPlate, includes glass-coated microfluidic channels for less compound absorption and, hence, more accurate IC(50) values. The microfluidic pathways also allow for very small amounts of compound used for each experiment ( approximately 5 microl per addition). Only the QPatch has four independent pipetting heads for more efficient liquid handling (especially for ligand-gated ion channel experiments). Patch clamp recordings with the QPatch match the high quality of conventional patch clamp and in some cases the results are even better. For example, only the QPatch includes 100% series resistance compensation for the elimination of false positives due to voltage errors. Finally, the modular QPatch 16 was designed with more channels in mind. The upgrade pathway to 48-channels (the QPatch HT) will be discussed.
QPatch 16显著提高了千兆封接膜片钳实验的通量，使得在离子通道药物研发和安全性测试中进行直接测量成为可能。QPatch由Sophion Bioscience于2004年秋季推向市场，它起源于NeuroSearch（丹麦）在自动膜片钳早期所做的工作。如今，QPatch具备许多独特的功能。例如，只有QPatch配备了自动细胞制备工作站，可实现数小时的无人值守操作。16通道电极阵列，即QPlate，包含玻璃涂层微流控通道，可减少化合物吸附，从而得到更准确的半数抑制浓度（IC50）值。微流控通道还使得每次实验所需的化合物量非常少（每次添加约5微升）。只有QPatch拥有四个独立的移液头，可实现更高效的液体处理（特别是对于配体门控离子通道实验）。使用QPatch进行的膜片钳记录可达到传统膜片钳的高质量，在某些情况下结果甚至更好。例如，请只有QPatch具备100%的串联电阻补偿功能，可消除由电压误差导致的假阳性结果。最后，模块化的QPatch 16在设计时考虑到了增加通道数量的需求。本文将讨论升级到48通道（QPatch HT）的途径。
