The First QPatch HT in China Placed in WuXi PharmaTech ...( SHANGHAI China May 21 /Xinhua-- W...),Health

SHANGHAI, China, May 21 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX), a leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device research and development outsourcing company with operations in China and the United States, announced today that it has acquired a QPatch HT automated patch clamp system, the first unit introduced into China by Sophion Bioscience.

The drug discovery process in pharmaceutical companies begins with identifying potential targets for new diseases. One important class of targets is ion channels that regulate the flow of ions across cellular membranes and therefore influence the physiology of all cells. Patch clamp is a widely applied gold-standard technique for the study of ion channels. Speed and accuracy of automated patch clamp systems are heavily demanded by pharmaceutical companies working with development of ion channel-based drugs.

The newly introduced QPatch HT is the world's first 48-channel gigaseal patch clamp system that can be applied to both voltage-gated and ligand-gated ion channels. With its ability to generate thousands of high-quality data points daily, QPatch HT is enabling new screening paradigms in ion channel drug discovery and safety testing on a truly industrial basis. It is claimed to be taking automated patch clamping to a new and even more powerful level.

"We hope the acquisition of the QPatch technology will assist WuXi PharmaTech in expanding their services into the rapidly increasing fields of cardiac safety testing and ion channel drug discovery," commented Frank Henrichsen, Vice President Sales and Marketing in Sophion Bioscience, the supplier of QPatch HT.

"We are very pleased to have installed the first QPatch HT automated patch clamp system in China, and indeed, the first ever such unit in any integrated drug and medical device R&D outsourcing service company," Dr. Peng Wang, Vice President of Discovery Biology at WuXi PharmaTech, said excitedly, "It will greatly enhan
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