Drug testing platform will benefit pharmaceutical sector
Scientists in England are developing a new drug testing platform that promises to bring long-term benefits to the pharmaceutical industry.
The team from Southampton University and Birkbeck College, University of London, is developing a platform consisting of an array of artificial cell membranes that will enable the more efficient testing of potential new drugs.
The Bilayer Platform project has been awarded £1.2m from the EPSRC to develop a technology that uses artificial bilayer lipid membranes to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs on ion channels.
Prof Hywel Morgan and Dr Maurits de Planque at Southampton University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) will use the clean-room technology in the new Mountbatten Building at Southampton University to build this novel platform for parallel on-chip electrophysiology. Each membrane patch will contain different ion channels.
According to de Planque, ion channels play a pivotal role in a wide variety of physiological processes and diseases and are consequently of considerable interest to the pharmaceutical industry. It is for this reason that the Southampton group has teamed up with the Birkbeck group, led by Prof Bonnie Ann Wallace, who are experts in ion channel structure and function.
Register now to continue reading
Thanks for visiting The Engineer. You’ve now reached your monthly limit of news stories. Register for free to unlock unlimited access to all of our news coverage, as well as premium content including opinion, in-depth features and special reports.
Benefits of registering
-
In-depth insights and coverage of key emerging trends
-
Unrestricted access to special reports throughout the year
-
Daily technology news delivered straight to your inbox
WildFusion helps robot traverse difficult terrain
<a...