HTS approaches to voltage-gated ion channel drug discovery

Voltage-gated ion channels are emerging as a target class of increasing importance to the pharmaceutical industry because of their relevance to a wide variety of diseases in the cardiovascular, CNS and metabolic areas. In the quest to identify novel lead molecules against these targets, drug discovery programmes are increasingly making use of HTS approaches. The authors describe the current technologies available for voltage-gated ion-channel screening, their application to HTS campaigns and the current limitations and emerging technologies within this area.