CLEVELAND, Sept. 17, 2012 (ANTARA/PRNewswire) -- ChanTest, the leading CRO expert in ion channels and nonclinical cardiac safety testing, announces funding of a Phase II SBIR grant. ChanTest will use the grant from the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute to optimize drug safety and discovery assays using stem cell-derived human cardiomyocytes.

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"This grant will allow us to optimize our industry-leading cardiomyocyte assays," said ChanTest's Principal Investigator Andrew Bruening-Wright, Ph.D. "With our collaborators at FDA, DSEC, and Leadscope, Inc., we have improved predictivity models based on currently available ChanTest services. Our nonclinical models will only get better as we fully integrate cardiomyocyte-based assays."

These cardiomyocyte assays are critical for improving the predictivity of nonclinical testing and reducing the use of animals as proposed in the NIH roadmap for drug discovery and the FDA's critical path initiative. The grant will also fund development of automated instrument-based services to increase throughput and drive down costs to meet the needs of ChanTest customers.

Dr. Arthur "Buzz" Brown, founder and CEO of ChanTest and co-PI on the grant, added "ChanTest has assembled an expert team to ensure success of this grant. We'll build on this success to improve drug discovery for other diseases in which ion channels play a critical role."

About ChanTest -- The Ion Channel Expert

ChanTest's mission is to serve the drug discovery and development needs of customers worldwide with high-value solutions for ion channel and GPCR biology. Since its inception in 1998, the company has tested compounds for more than 500 global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and partners with them to speed the drug development process for the release of better, safer drugs. ChanTest offers integrated ion channel and GPCR services (GLP and non-GLP) and reagents; the company's library of validated ion channel cell lines and pre-clinical cardiac risk assessment service portfolio are the most comprehensive commercially available today. Because of ChanTest's seminal role in the nonclinical cardiac safety field, along with the company's uncompromising commitment to quality, ChanTest has been named the "most trusted and most used fee-for-service provider" for ion channel screening in an independent survey for the past three years. ChanTest is based in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information, e-mail info@chantest.com.

CONTACT: Chris Mathes, +1-732-586-1073

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