Molecular Devices Corporation, a leader in innovative solutions for drug discovery and life sciences research, announced the introduction of four new reagent kits targeted at assay development and high throughput screening.

The FLIPR Sodium Assay Kit provides the first sodium channel specific functional screen that can be run in a high throughput environment. Sodium channels are important targets for cardiac or nervous system drugs, and traditional screening methods are labor intensive, time consuming, and often use radioactivity. The reagents in the FLIPR Sodium Assay Kit are non-radioactive and provide for a homogeneous, fast, and highly specific assay using Molecular Devices' FLIPR system.

Two additional kits for important drug discovery techniques enable rapid assay development on the recently introduced FLEXstation development and detection system. The FLEXstation Calcium Assay Kit and FLEXstation Membrane Potential Assay Kit are optimized for assay development using the FLEXstation platform. Both assays are already available in a high throughput format for use on the FLIPR system.

The HEFP Phosphodiesterase Assay Kit is the first high-throughput, non-radioactive assay for screening phosphodiesterases, important drug targets for diseases such as erectile dysfunction and asthma. This kit is the first of a series of reagents that use a proprietary fluorescent polarization assay technology developed at Molecular Devices. As with all other HEFP reagents, this kit is optimized for use on Molecular Devices' Analyst, Acquest and ScreenStation multimode detection systems.

"These new reagent kits expand the applications of our FLIPR, FLEXstation and fluorescence polarization platforms," commented Stephen Oldfield, Director of Marketing for Drug Discovery at Molecular Devices. "We are excited about the potential of such enabling products that provide cost effective, non-radioactive, and rapid solutions for drug discovery screening and life sciences research. In addition, these launches demonstrate our continued commitment to increase revenues from consumable products by introducing novel, proprietary reagent kits."

With the introduction of these four kits, Molecular Devices will now offer nine reagent kits covering a broad range of important assays for drug discovery. These kits, along with others in development, are targeted to support and expand a substantial installed base of instruments and to provide researchers with a more efficient way to perform drug discovery.