Ace Therapeutics offers comprehensive membrane clamp solutions, including detailed case studies, efficient experiments and high-quality data generation. If your therapeutic area is related to psychiatric disorders such as cognitive decline, schizophrenia, neuropathic pain or epilepsy, you are likely interested in the precise effects of your compounds on neurotransmission. Our Patch-clamp service allows high-resolution recordings from individual neurons to help you address detailed psychiatric disease pharmacology questions.

Introduction of Patch-Clamp in Psychiatry

Any form of experience (acute or chronic), including learning, exposure to substances of abuse, stress, etc., can alter various aspects of neuronal function in specific brain regions thereby causing mental illness. The membrane clamp technique is a versatile electrophysiological tool used to understand the behavior of ion channels. Every cell expresses ion channels, but the most common cells studied using the membrane clamp technique include neurons, myofibers, cardiomyocytes, and oocytes that overexpress a single ion channel. In addition, the use of whole-cell membrane clamp recording techniques allows for the study of neuronal function at the single-cell level, thereby enhancing the understanding of the molecular genetic basis of psychiatric disorders.

Fig. 1 Patch clamp-assisted single neuron lipidomics. (Merrill CB, et al., 2017)

Patch-Clamp Services

Ace Therapeutics can identify many changes through whole-cell recordings of brain slices from animal models of mental illness, including many components involved in neuronal function (e.g., ligand-activated ion channels, voltage-gated ion channels, neurotransmitter transporter proteins), and the resulting brain circuit activity and behavior. Furthermore, at the neuronal level, brain circuit activity arises from the ongoing interactions between synaptic (e.g., glutamatergic transmission) and intrinsic cellular excitatory factors (e.g., axonal dendritic ion channels: sodium, Na⁺, potassium, K⁺, and calcium, Ca²⁺). We were able to isolate signal changes originating from synaptic versus intrinsic excitatory changes by membrane clamp electrophysiological techniques.

Our Workflow

1. Prepare solutions- Develop internal and external solutions and adjust osmolarity and pH.
2. Prepare Cells or Brain Sections-Prepare cultured cells, isolated neurons, brain sections, or whole animals.
3. Pull and polish pipettes-Prepare recording electrodes, pull glass capillaries and polish pipette tips.
4. Set up the perfusion system-Set up the perfusion system and data acquisition software.
5. Repair Cells-Touch the cell membrane with the pipette using the manipulator to ensure a high resistance electrical seal is formed.
6. Signal Acquisition and Amplification-Signal will be amplified
7. Signal Digitization-Digitize analog signals for signal analysis
8. Data Acquisition and Analysis- Enables faster data analysis and accurate measurements

What Can We Help You Achieve in Psychiatry with Patch-Clamp?

• Measurement of single-channel currents, spontaneous neuronal cell firing and synaptic potentials, and intracellularly evoked action potentials
• Assess synaptic excitability
• Promote understanding of passive and active biophysical properties of excitable cells
• Perform patch electrode recordings of individual neurons to physiologically characterize their maturation stage
• Investigate the role of cAMP in regulating spontaneous firing of blue spot neurons
• Study the role of adenosine at the postsynaptic level
• Understand the changes in cortical circuit function that occur between sleep and wakefulness

Ace Therapeutics is capable of performing the entire spectrum of membrane clamp technology experiments from the smallest single channel to the largest macroscopic recordings. We have advanced manual and automated membrane clamp devices to help you achieve faster data analysis and accurate measurements to advance your understanding of the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders. If you are interested in patch-clamp services, please feel free to make an inquiry.

Reference

1. Merrill CB, et al. Patch clamp-assisted single neuron lipidomics [published correction appears in Sci Rep. 2018 Apr 25;8(1):6772]. Sci Rep. 2017, 7(1):5318.