• Expansion of Axol Bioscience’s service offering for pre-clinical drug discovery
  • New services combine the Company’s iPSC-derived human cells and electrophysiological expertise with Axion Biosystems’ Maestro Pro MEA platform

Cambridge, UK, 13 October 2020: Axol Bioscience (Axol), a biotechnology company specializing in the use of stem cell technology to manufacture disease-relevant cell-based assay systems to the drug discovery industry, today announced the expansion of its service offering, with the introduction of multi-electrode array (MEA) screening for human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cells. The new services have been developed to support pre-clinical research by optimizing hiPSC-derived cell culture, while providing high-quality electrophysiological data acquisition and analysis from physiologically relevant human cell models.

As part of the new services, Axol is incorporating the Maestro Pro, a market-leading MEA platform from Axion Biosystems (Axion). This will allow customers to benefit from Axol’s extensive catalog of hiPSC-derived cells and in-house electrophysiology expertise, in combination with Axion’s most advanced offering. The Maestro Pro enables continuous label-free and real-time data acquisition and analysis from 768 electrodes, in up to a 96wp format, allowing for a high-throughput of data.

Axol’s MEA screening service offering will include:

  • recording of field action potentials from neurons and cardiomyocytes
  • local extracellular action potential (LEAP) and contractility recordings from cardiomyocytes
  • cell visualization and multiplexing for microscopy and calcium imaging assays
  • targeted panel compound and new chemical entity (NCE) screening
  • cardiotoxicity and neurotoxicity testing
  • cell, co-culture and disease model validation
  • long-term cell proliferation studies
  • bespoke projects and pilot studies.

The launch of Axol’s services follows the recent appointment of Liam Taylor as CEO at Axol, and forms part of the Company’s strategy to grow its iPSC technologies, products and services.

Liam Taylor, CEO, Axol Bioscience, said: “At Axol, we have worked extremely hard to establish ourselves as the market-leading provider of neuroscience and cardio-based hiPSC-derived cells. As we grow, it’s now time to also offer our considerable in-house expertise to the preclinical drug discovery market. As such, we are proud to announce our new MEA capability utilizing the industry-leading Axion Maestro Pro platform.”

For further information about Axol’s MEA screening services, please visit: https://www.axolbio.com/page/mea-services