Event
Axxam at the Ion Channel-Targeted Drug Development Summit
Hunter Shaw
Director
BD – East Coast
Jean-Francois Rolland
Senior Vice President
Early Drug Discovery
Where Chemical Biology Meets Drug Discovery: Axxam in Cambridge
Ion channels are important therapeutic targets across multiple disease areas. Yet, their complex biology can make functional characterization and compound profiling particularly challenging.
At the Ion Channel-Targeted Drug Development Summit 2026 in Boston, Axxam will connect with the ion channel community to discuss new approaches to screening, characterization, and drug discovery.
Jean-Francois Rolland, Senior Vice President Early Drug Discovery, and Hunter Shaw will represent Axxam at the meeting.
Capturing ion channel function with electrophysiology
Understanding how a compound modulates an ion channel requires direct and reliable functional measurements.
Axxam combines manual and automated patch-clamp electrophysiology with flexible assay development and screening capabilities. This enables ion channel activity to be investigated across different stages of early drug discovery.
Our platforms support both ligand- and voltage-gated ion channels, with applications ranging from compound profiling to primary screening, hit validation, and mode-of-action studies.
Depending on the scientific question and required throughput, our electrophysiology capabilities include:
- Manual patch clamp for detailed functional and mechanistic characterization
- QPatch platforms for medium- to high-throughput screening and compound profiling
- SyncroPatch 384 platforms for fully automated high-throughput screening
- Electrophysiology using iPSC-derived cells
- Multi-electrode array (MEA) recordings for population-level electrical activity
This flexibility allows the experimental strategy to be adapted to the target instead of forcing every ion channel program into the same workflow.
Looking beyond the plasma membrane
Not every therapeutically relevant ion channel is located at the cell surface.
Intracellular ion channels and transporters play key roles in ion homeostasis and cellular signaling. Therefore, studying their activity directly within organelles can provide valuable functional and pharmacological information.
Axxam has developed specialized organellar electrophysiology approaches to investigate ion channels and electrogenic transporters in their native subcellular environment.
Our capabilities include:
LysoPatch
Functional and pharmacological characterization of ion channels on isolated lysosomes, using manual and automated patch clamp.
NucleoPatch
Single-channel electrophysiology for ion channels endogenously expressed on the outer membrane of isolated nuclei.
MitoPatch
Patch-clamp approaches for studying ion channels and transport processes in isolated mitochondria.
Together, these platforms extend electrophysiological investigation from the plasma membrane to lysosomes, nuclei, and mitochondria.
Your ion channel, the right experimental approach
Ion channel programs can require very different strategies depending on the target, biological context, and stage of discovery.
Axxam combines electrophysiology with assay development, screening, compound profiling, and pharmacological characterization. This allows our scientists to select the technologies and experimental conditions that best address each research question.
From conventional cellular ion channels to targets located within intracellular organelles, our goal is to generate functional data that can guide decisions throughout early drug discovery.
Let’s talk ion channels in Boston
Are you attending the Ion Channel-Targeted Drug Development Summit 2026?
Meet Jean-Francois Rolland and Hunter Shaw in Boston on September 23–24 to discuss your ion channel program and explore how Axxam’s electrophysiology capabilities can support your research.