Improved Assays in Pain Research Using Native Neurons

Cellectricon, a leading provider of advanced cell-based screening technologies and services, will co-host a webinar with Neusentis, describing the use of native cells to develop an assay with improved physiological relevance over traditional approaches in pain drug discovery research. Entitled ‘Development of Cell-Based Assays for Pain Drug Discovery Using Native Sensory Neurons’, the webinar will take place on 16 May at 11am EDT; researchers can register at www.cellecticon.com/events.

Cellectricon is creating model systems with native neurons for registering changes in neural activity — both at the cellular and network level — using its Cellaxess Elektra discovery platform, and Neusentis is a Pfizer Research Unit focusing on pain and sensory disorders. Webinar participants will gain further understanding of the underlying mechanisms causing chronic pain, and learn more about phenotypic screening approaches in pain research and the use of compound profiling to advance research in the CNS and pain therapeutic fields.

Presentations from Dr Darren Cawkill, Associate Research Fellow at Neusentis, and Dr Paul Karila, VP Discovery Services, Cellectricon, will cover the results from their assay development work. Dr Cawkill will go on to present data from an additional phenotypic screening case study, which describes the progress towards high-throughput compatible assays using both primary rat neuronal cultures and human stem cell-derived sensory neurons. There will also be a discussion on how such phenotypic screening assays could be integrated into drug discovery programmes.