Metrion have teamed up with Axxam, Nanion, SB Discovery and Sophion to deliver a series of presentations from drug discovery companies, companies that provide ion channel services to drug discovery companies and companies that provide products to ion channel drug discovery companies, as well as other speakers in the field of ion channel drug discovery, including several academic speakers.

Ion channels are an important class of therapeutic drug targets, and mutations in ion channel genes are found to be responsible for an increasing number of diseases.  While conventional electrophysiological techniques permit the most detailed and direct study of ion channel function, they are limited due to the manual nature of the method and their low throughput.  Because of this, ion channels remain an underrepresented target class for drug discovery.

The advent of higher throughput automated electrophysiology systems changed the face of ion channel drug discovery.  Since the inaugural “Drug Discovery for Ion Channels” satellite meeting, there have been many advances in ion channel drug discovery including new instrumentation and techniques.  For this year, we propose to continue the “Satellite Meeting” tradition at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting and review the advances ion channel drug discovery.