Discussion

Automated patch clamp electrophysiology has become commonplace in many screening laboratories. Nevertheless, there is still an ever- increasing requirement for higher throughput without losing data quality. The SyncroPatch 384PE is a revolutionary automated patch clamp system consisting of a patch clamp module for recording up to 768 cells simultaneously which can be integrated into existing pipetting robots. The CardioExcyte 96 allows reliable high throughput label-free measurements of short- and long-term compound effects in drug safety screening . It monitors both, MEA-like extracellular field potential (EFP) and the impedance of monolayers or clusters of beating cells with an outstanding time resolution. Due to the development of stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes as a model standard for cardio-vascular risk assessment the combination of automated patch clamp and label-free investigations will be most probably the prospective choice for in-vitro diagnostics in the future.