Susanne Braum, Dynaflow™ System Application Specialist, Cellectricon

What is your background and what made you decide to join the company?

I studied biology and did my PhD in electrophysiology, so from my background I understand the technical details of our products. I have some business experience since I joined a venture capital company, where I have been in charge for one of the competitors of Cellectricon AB. For the last year I than have been employed by this competitor. At the moment I am entering Sales and Marketing; so joining everything together that I have done before.

I believe that Cellectricon has a lot of intellectual property surrounding its technology. Can you tell us about these?

Cellectricon was formed in late 2000 based on ten years of internationally renowned research and on an extensive and solid patent portfolio. Cellectricon owns more than 10 patent families, where several of the patents are the first in their respective areas of innovation. The patent portfolio is within different areas such as high-throughput electrophysiology, patch-clamp, microfluidics, microfabrication and electroporation. Cellectricon's strategy, however, are to out-license parts of our intellectual property, as we are committed to providing high-throughput cell-based assays to our customers.

What is the Dynaflow™ technology?

Dynaflow™ technology is built around a pioneering microfluidic device. Using this device in ion channel screening, you will significantly boost your data output. Our easy-to-use technology will be integrated in a conventional patch-clamp setup. It is based on a computer controlled microfluidic chip, which enables extremely fast solution exchange rates by creating a laminar flow.

The Dynaflow software synchronizes with the acquisition software used for an accurately defined tagging in the original data. Comparing data quality, setup time and throughput the Dynaflow technology is on eye level to parallel patch-clamp systems. In addition, the microfluidic format ensures low compound consumption, an advantage from both economical and safety aspects.

The Dynaflow system is used for various screening and characterization applications for both voltage- and ligand- gated ion channels in drug discovery, safety pharmacology and biomedical research. For full flexibility in assay design, the Dynaflow chips are now available in 8-channel, 16-channel and 48-channel configurations. The chips are designed to be used with any active substance, any cells and on both voltage- and ligand-gated ion channels.

What would you say the advantages of your technology are over any of your competitors?

It is the only system that offers true cost efficiency and the only system that can be used with any cell, any patch configuration, any active substance and both ligand- and voltage gated ion channels. The system enables new types of experiments and gives data quality at the highest throughput resulting in less cost per data point.

Our system enables the customer to achieve as high data quality as he is used to achieve from conventional patch clamping. Additionally the seal stability will increase as well as the experimental time available on one single cell. Together with a higher number of active substances that can be applied, there will be a tremendous rise in efficiency.

It is easy to install since Dynaflow technology is integrated into a conventional patch-clamp setup. It takes the customer approximately two hours to install and afterwards they can perform their experiments without delay because there is no need of changing cell handling or develop a new cell assay. We will launch a new range of chips in August that is developed to yield maximum in hERG studies.

Who is currently using your technology?

At the moment it is mostly big pharma for screening and safety pharmacology. Amongst several others, eight of the top ten pharmaceutical companies have already integrated the Dynaflow system into their ion channel drug discovery program. AstraZeneca, for an example, has implemented multiple Dynaflow systems on several sites, worldwide. We are now entering the academic market as well.

We have seen an increased interest in Ion channels recently. Are you seeing people more interested in your technology because of this?

Yes, we have experienced an increasing demand for Dynaflow. Ion channels represent an important class of drug targets. However, ion channels have proven to be very difficult targets for drug development, mainly due to a lack of efficient screening procedures. This is particularly true during the later stages of the drug development process, where functional cell-based assays are strongly preferred.

Dynaflow™ provides a solution to the current need of a functional ion channel assay with a dramatic throughput increase. Not only does the system apply to both ligand- and voltage-gated ion channels it also enables new types of experiments where you can retrieve information that was impossible before. We have academic sites using the Dynaflow system for interesting research. These results will be presented at Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting this November.

Do you have any products in development at the moment?

Cellectricon is currently developing a system for transfection of cells. The new device, called Cellaxess, can simultaneously electroporate the cells of a 96-well plate and offers an efficient methodology with maximum yield and higher throughput. The cells are electroporated in adherent state, i.e. where they are grown, so the cells retain natural morphology and conjunction to each other. Cellaxess is slated to be launched at the American Society for Cell Biology's Annual Meeting in December.

In summary, how is Cellectricon aiding the drug discovery process?

The pharmaceutical industry has a great need for new tools that make faster and more information rich pharmaceutical tests possible in an early phase in the pharmaceutical development process. Increased capacity is needed, in part to identify new targets and in part to identify new substances.

Cellectricon has a distinctive portfolio of cell-based assay products and as a company focused to provide high-throughput cell-based assays to their customers. Through Cellectricon's unique combination of microtechnology and biology, products are developed to solve several of today's limitations in the drug discovery process.

Further Information: http://www.cellectricon.com