Resources library

Nanion x ORIA webinar: Advances in High-Throughput Organellar Electrophysiology

Speakers: Bastien Masson (ORIA), Markus Rapedius (Nanion) Patch-clamp electrophysiology on organelles remains technically demanding: failed preparations, high variability, and incompatible toolchains slow down even experienced teams. Organelles concentrate this challenge, sitting at the intersection of high pharmacological relevance and notoriously difficult access. In this webinar, ORIA Bioscience and Nanion Technologies show how combining ready-to-use, purified lysosomes and mitochondria with automated patch-clamp platforms can fundamentally change the game. We’ll cover how to streamline your preparation workflow, reduce assay variability, and generate high-quality organelle electrophysiology data more consistently.

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2026 - Seipin: A central lipid rheostat

Abdou Rachid Thiam, Maxime Carpentier – J Cell Biol  Seipin is a conformationally flexible, oligomeric scaffold that regulates cellular lipid homeostasis beyond lipid droplet (LD) biogenesis. Seipin senses local lipid composition and membrane features to direct metabolic flux toward specific pathways and organelles. Its ring adopts multiple conformations, influenced by cofactors such as the LD assembly factor 1 and adipogenin, as well as lipid ligands including phosphatidic acid, diacylglycerol, and triacylglycerol, conferring broad functional versatility. Although seipin is an ER-resident protein primarily enriched at ER-LD junctions, a fraction relocates to mitochondria-associated membranes under specific metabolic conditions, where it regulates lipid synthesis, turnover, and local Ca2+ levels, thereby facilitating interorganelle communication and maintaining metabolic stability. Seipin dysfunction disrupts this multinodal regulation, causing lipid imbalance, organelle abnormalities, and a range of metabolic and neuronal disorders. We propose a unified model in which seipin functions as a multistate proteolipid regulatory hub: a rheostat whose structure and interactome dynamically adjust to control lipid pathway decisions in response to metabolic signals across organelle contact networks.

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Breaking barriers in lysosomal electrophysiology: Automated solutions for ion channel analysis

Automated Patch Clamp (APC) of lysosomal ion channels was achieved using enlarged lysosomes (LYSO-Prep™, Oria Biosci ence), enabling measurement of ion channel activity such as TRPML1. Lysosomes were successfully captured on two Sophion systems, with success rates of 69.9 ± 3.2% on the QPatch® 48 and 74.6 ± 2.6% on the Qube® 384. The lysosomal recordings showed stable seals and robust TRPML1 current responses…

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LYSO-Prep™ for organellar electrophysiology: A new tool for high throughput measurement of lysosomal TRPML1 channels using the SyncroPatch 384, SURFE2R N1 and SURFE2R 96SE

The gold standard to functionally characterize lysosomal ion channels remains manual patch clamp recordings of enlarged individual lysosomes isolated from individual cells1. This technique is time-consuming and technically challenging, but other electrophysiological techniques are beginning to overcome these challenges, resulting in higher throughput characterization of isolated lysosomes…

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New frontier: Investigating regulation of lysosomal ion channels at elevated temperatures in the native system

Ion channel activity is modulated by various stimuli including voltage, pH, lipids or neurotransmitters that turn various inputs into electrical signals. In addition, the activity can also be modulated by temperature with the example of the transient receptor potential (TRP) family of ion channels that show a remarkably high sensitivity to changes in temperature and mediate temperature-sensation in animals.

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Sophion x ORIA webinar: Simplifying organelle electrophysiology with ready-to-use ORIA organelles and Sophion automated patch clamp technology

Speakers: Alexandre Santinho (ORIA), Bastien Masson (ORIA), Eliška Waloschková (Sophion) Organelle electrophysiology is advancing rapidly, but traditional isolation workflows are slowing researchers down. This webinar brings together Oria Bioscience and Sophion Bioscience to showcase a faster, more reliable approach for working with lysosomes and other organelles. You’ll learn how to perform organelle patch clamp faster, more reliably, and with fewer failed experiments – using tools that actually work together. Discover how combining Oria’s ready‑to‑use organelles and Sophion’s automated patch‑clamp platforms can help you remove preparation bottlenecks, reduce variability, and deliver high-quality organelle data with your experiments. In this webinar, you’ll gain actionable guidance to optimize your patch-clamp workflows, practical strategies to improve assay reliability using ready-to-use organelles, and expert tips to avoid common technical patch clamp pitfalls.

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2026 - Poster: High-throughput lysosome isolation and multi-modal functional characterization

Bastien Masson & al.  Lysosomes are key organelles combining essential degradation functions, intracellular homeostasis and signalling. They are implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and immune disorders. Despite the fact that 70% of proteins are inside the cells, so far, critical ion channels, transporters and luminal enzymes have been understudied due to technical limitations. ORIA Bioscience has developed a unique microfluidic-based isolation and conservation method to provide scientists with highly pure and functional lysosomes. ORIA’s quality control is based on combining imaging, specific protein markers presence, complemented by enzymatic activity as an additional functional readout. Further electrophysiology-based validations on distinct platforms demonstrated the improved functionality and reliability of the LYSO-prep™ for the recordings of key targets e.g. TRPML1, TMEM175 and TCP2.

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Abdou Rachid Thiam​ | Liliane Bettencourt Price for Life Sciences 2025

Abdou Rachid Thiam, Research Director at the CNRS and Head of the “Biological Emulsions” Group at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, develops and applies tools derived from physics to study how organelles function. Among these cellular compartments, he is particularly interested in lipid droplets. His multidisciplinary work, at the intersection of physics and biology, has revealed how cells dynamically reorganize their organelles in response to changes in lipid and energy levels.

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2025 - ATG2A-mediated DAG transfer recruits DGAT2 for lipid droplet growth

Abdou Rachid Thiam & al. – Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Lipid droplet (LD) growth mechanisms and the roles of LD-associated lipid transfer proteins remain poorly understood. Here we show that the autophagy lipid transfer protein ATG2A has an anabolic role and promotes LD expansion by transferring diacylglycerol (DAG), triacylglycerol (TAG) and phosphatidic acid, from the endoplasmic reticulum to LDs. In ATG2A deficiency, synthesized lipids are incorporated inefficiently into LDs and assemble new LDs. In addition, DAG O-acyltransferase 2 (DGAT2), which synthesizes TAG and expands LD, fails to relocate to LDs. In vitro, DAG recruits DGAT2 to LDs. These findings support the idea that ATG2A-mediated DAG transfer recruits DGAT2 to LDs, promoting LD expansion. ATG2A alone promotes LD growth by transferring TAG and DAG, but its effectiveness in LD expansion is reduced when DGAT2 is inhibited. This synergistic action with DGAT2 prevents the buildup of nonmembrane lipids within the endoplasmic reticulum and favors TAG synthesis on the LD surface.

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2025 - Lysosomal Ion Channels and Transporters: Recent Findings, Therapeutic Potential, and Technical Approaches

Artem Kondratskyi & al. – BIOELECTRICITY In recent years, there has been a growing interest in lysosomal ion channels and transporters due to their critical role in maintaining lysosomal function and their involvement in a variety of diseases, particularly lysosomal storage diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. Recent advancements in research techniques, including manual and automated patch clamp (APC) electrophysiology, solid-supported membrane-based electrophysiology (SSME), and fluorescence-based ion imaging, have further enhanced our ability to investigate lysosomal ion channels and transporters in both physiological and pathological conditions, spurring drug discovery efforts. Several pharmaceutical companies are now developing thera pies aimed at modulating these channels and transporters to improve lysosomal function in disease. Small molecules targeting channels like transient receptor potential mucolipin (TRPML) 1 and TMEM175, as well as drugs modulating lysosomal pH, are currently in preclinical and clinical development. This review provides an overview of the role of lysosomal ion channels and transporters in health and disease, high lights the cutting-edge techniques used to study them, and discusses the therapeutic potential of targeting these channels and transporters in the treatment of various diseases. Furthermore, in addition to summariz ing recent discoveries, we contribute novel functional data on cystinosin, TRPML1, and two-pore channel 2 (TPC2), utilizing both SSME and APC approaches.

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2025 - Advancing drug discovery with electrophysiological tools for lysosomal and organellar ion channels

Niels fertig, Alexandre Santinho – Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery Ion channels, traditionally studied for their critical roles in cellular signaling and excitability, have been extensively characterized at the plasma membrane level using electrophysiological methods such as the patch clamp technique. Over the past two decades, the automation of patch clamp technology has revolutionized ion channel research, enabling high-throughput screening and transforming drug discovery. While automated patch clamp has become the gold standard for studying plasma membrane ion channels, its application to intracellular ion conducting proteins has been a more recent development.

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2024 - Giant organelle vesicles to uncover intracellular membrane mechanics and plasticity

Alexandre Santinho, Maxime Carpentier, Julio Lopes Sampaio, Mohyeddine Omrane, Abdou Rachid Thiam – Nature Communications Tools for accessing and studying organelles remain underdeveloped. Here, we present a method by which giant organelle vesicles (GOVs) are generated by submitting cells to a hypotonic medium followed by plasma membrane breakage. By this means, GOVs ranging from 3 to over 10 µm become available for micromanipulation. GOVs are made from organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum, endosomes, lysosomes and mitochondria, or in contact with one another such as giant mitochondria-associated ER membrane vesicles. We measure the mechanical properties of each organelle-derived GOV and find that they have distinct properties. In GOVs procured from Cos7 cells, for example, bending rigidities tend to increase from the endoplasmic reticulum to the plasma membrane. We also found that the mechanical properties of giant endoplasmic reticulum vesicles (GERVs) vary depending on their interactions with other organelles or the metabolic state of the cell. Lastly, we demonstrate GERVs’ biochemical activity through their capacity to synthesize triglycerides and assemble lipid droplets. These findings underscore the potential of GOVs as valuable tools for studying the biophysics and biology of organelles.

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