Our goal is to apply newly emerging technology in MEMS and microfluidics to create a high-throughput electrophysiology platform for characterizing ion channels in drug discovery and drug development. We plan to replace the micropipette of the original patch clamp design with Ag/AgCl electrodes, and form arrays of electrodes to create a high-throughput patch clamp system on a chip. The device should be high-throughput, to increase the amount of data able to be collected per unit time. Furthermore, the device should be largely automated, in order to reduce or eliminate the manual labor traditionally associated with the patch clamp technique. At the same time, we would like to maintain high “giga-ohm” seals and not sacrifice data quality in our quest to achieve ease of use and implementation.
Project end date: 08/26/05