Invented in the period 1999 to 2000 several patents in Astrazeneca and in the Neurosearch spin-off Sophion Bioscience . The inventions made in these years were a significant improvement on the Nobelprize winning patch-clamp technique 1991 by Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann from the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The inverted technique invented by Lars Thomsen and brought to best practise by the company Nanion allows patch clamping to be performed without the need for advanced manual micro-positioning of electrodes and without need for strong anti-vibration instrumentation which comes with a steep cost. The inverted patch clamp technology invented by Lars Thomsen has made patch-clamping a main-stream technology.The patents from Astrazeneca became public domain due to some mistakes by the Astrazeneca laywers and has been exploited by other companies especially Nanion
