You may already have seen the buzz around the recent Nav1.9 paper from GSK and OmniAb Inc:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026895X26000258

Marc Rogers also wrote a beautiful commentary on the study, well worth reading for anyone interested in ion channel drug discovery:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mxrogers_perspective-on-nav19-as-a-tractable-analgesia-ugcPost-7465372964486701056-iSDn

Beyond the exciting discovery of potent and selective Nav1.9 inhibitors, the study is also a great example of what automated patch clamp can enable.

After optimizing human, rodent and primate Nav1.9 assays on SyncroPatch 384 devices, the authors screened an impressive library of 378,000 compounds and identified the quinoline compound ICA604025, a highly selective and state-dependent Nav1.9 inhibitor. The compound was subsequently profiled across the entire Nav1.x family, demonstrating remarkable selectivity.

Nav1.9 has long been considered one of the most challenging sodium channel targets due to difficulties with expression, assay development and the lack of selective pharmacological tools. This work demonstrates that even highly challenging ion channel targets can become tractable for large-scale screening once robust APC assays are established.

Congratulations to the authors on this impressive work!

———-

Read the full article: Identification and characterization of selective inhibitors of Nav1.9 voltage dependent sodium channels

Learn more about the SyncroPatch 384.