| Jul 06, 2011 |
New microsystem for better drug-testing
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(Nanowerk News) A University of Southampton nanoscientist is working on a new microsystem for more efficient testing of pharmaceutical drugs to treat diseases such as cystic fibrosis, MG (myasthenia gravis) and epilepsy.
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Dr Maurits de Planque of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University will develop a new method to investigate the ion channels that underlie these serious disorders and that are used to test the effectiveness of new drugs.
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"At the moment, commercial testing of new drugs is carried out using ion channels in living cell membranes. This is a slow and difficult process, not least because producing too many channels actually kills the cells," said Dr de Planque.
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The researchers therefore plan to produce these ion channels without using cells, which is possible with so-called cell-free expression mixtures, and to insert the channels in a very stable artificial cell membrane which should enable faster, less expensive drug testing.
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"Researchers have experimented with cell-free mixtures before, but they found that this method was not economical due to the amount of expensive biochemicals required," said Dr de Planque. "Our proposal to develop a new platform, which uses a couple of microlitres instead of millilitres, will be a very cost-effective way of doing this, particularly when the produced channel is directly inserted in a membrane for drug testing."
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Dr de Planque is conducting this research over a two-year period in collaboration with biological scientists at the University of Southampton. He is Principal Investigator for the project: Microsystems for Coupled Expression and Electrophysiology of Ion Channels, which has been awarded a grant of £125,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
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