Multi-patch: a chip-based ion-channel assay system for drug screening

Ion channels are cellular membrane proteins that act as specific signal transducers. They have crucial roles in physiology and pathophysiology and are important drug targets. Patch-damp is the gold-standard for assessing ion channel function but does not have the potential to be automated and parallelized. This fact underlies current efforts in developing parallel patch-on-chip platforms in order to provide higher throughput and better reproducibility. Our approach is to develop a bio-electronic sandwich interface between microstructured substrates and printed circuits. ´Multi-patch´ is a patch-on-a-chip device replacing patch pipettes by micrometer-sized holes and enabling multiple simultaneous single-cell electrical measurements. We present here a comparative approach of different substrates in view of the development of a chip-based device. We emphasize on the silicon technology pointing out its advantages in terms of microstructuration and development of an integrated electronics.