BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Light-speed electrophysiology

How Q-State combines iPS cells and optogenetics to study CNS and heart diseases

June 25, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

The inability of standard electrophysiological methods to detect high resolution signals in a large number of cells simultaneously has hampered the development of new therapies for neurological and cardiac diseases. Q-State Biosciences Inc.'s high throughput Optopatch platform solves that problem by applying optogenetic tools to large populations of neurons or cardiomyocytes, enabling the CRO to efficiently assess disease phenotypes and screen compounds.

Optopatch uses patient-derived induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells engineered to express an actuator that triggers cellular activity in response to light pulses, and a voltage indicator that emits light as a visual readout when cells are electrically active. Q-State's activators include variants of Scherffelia dubia channelrhodopsin modified to respond to shorter wavelengths and lower intensities of light than routinely used actuators. The indicators are based on archaerhodopsin 3, a protein derived from a Dead Sea microorganism that ordinarily converts infrared light from the sun into electrical energy...