Simulations Aim to Match Ion-Channel Drugs to Mutations
A $770,000 Hartwell-funded collaboration is at the research stage, with no clinical timeline announced.
Updated on Nov. 5, 2026 in Biotech
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Two university labs received a $770,000 Hartwell Foundation award to identify precision therapies for ion-channel disorders, a class of conditions caused by genetic changes that alter how ion channels work. The work is research-stage: the collaboration has been funded but has not yet produced reported results.
Why it matters
Only a small fraction of the thousands of known ion-channel variants have been studied, because each one must first be measured through months of laboratory recordings. Pairing predictive simulations with medication ranking aims to widen that bottleneck and match treatments to specific mutations rather than broad diagnoses.
The award funds direct costs of $770,000 over two years. The labs plan to combine simulations predicting variant measurements with rankings of approved drugs, but no validation results or variant counts have been released.
The players
Pranam Chatterjee
Assistant professor of bioengineering and computer science at Penn Engineering, whose lab develops computational models of how gene mutations alter ion channel shape and gating, and who received a 2022 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award.
Roy Ben-Shalom
Assistant professor of neurology at UC Davis Health and the UC Davis MIND Institute, whose lab works on ion-channel disorders and contributes the laboratory-recording side of the collaboration.
Hartwell Foundation
A private foundation that funds biomedical research, which awarded the $770,000 Biomedical Research Collaboration Award to the two labs.
The details
Ion channels are proteins that form pores in brain cells, letting charged particles flow in and out to drive electrical signaling. When genetic changes alter how these pores open and close, the resulting ion-channel disorders are called channelopathies. The Ben-Shalom and Chatterjee Labs plan to use simulations to predict how a given variant will measure in the lab, then rank approved medications most likely to correct it and design new molecules for variants no existing drug fits.
Timeline
Chatterjee received a Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award in 2022.
The $770,000 award funds direct costs over a two-year period.
The Tech Race
The effort sits within a broader push to match therapies to individual genetic variants rather than broad diagnoses, as reflected in the Hartwell Foundation's funding of computational approaches to channelopathies. Its distinguishing feature is pairing simulation-based variant prediction with ranking of existing approved drugs.
The collaboration is at the research stage, so no treatment is currently available to patients. If its approach works, families with a child carrying a specific ion-channel mutation could eventually receive a therapy matched to that mutation, though no timeline for clinical availability has been announced.
The takeaway
The shift from diagnosis-based to variant-based treatment depends on whether simulated predictions hold up against laboratory measurements. Watch for published validation of the simulations and any reported variant rankings from the Ben-Shalom and Chatterjee Labs over the two-year funding period.
Further reading
For broader context on how computational tools are reshaping drug development, explore Biotech coverage across the United States.
Source note: This article includes information reported by The American Bazaar.
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