CLEVELAND, Aug. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today ChanTest announces the hiring of Chris Mathes, Ph.D., M.B.A. to lead its business into a new era. Mathes starts September 1st as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and will oversee all sales, marketing and customer relations activities at ChanTest. He will also contribute to the forward looking and strategic guidance of ChanTest as a global player in the CRO industry.

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"Chris is a real ion channel guy," said Dr. Arthur "Buzz" Brown, CEO, President & Founder of ChanTest. "As CCO, he brings a unique mix of science and business to our company in order to make ChanTest's interface to the world even better."

Dr. Mathes has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA and an MBA from Rutgers University. He has published several ion channel papers in peer reviewed journals over the past two decades.  In the last 10 years, Mathes has been a pioneer in the development and implementation of automated patch clamp systems for ion channel safety testing and drug discovery. 

"I'm really excited about this opportunity at ChanTest," Mathes said. "ChanTest is already the market leading ion channel CRO. My goal is to further enhance the brand and to expand the business.  I want to make sure that every pharmaceutical or biotech lab in the world accesses the ion channel and scientific expertise available at ChanTest."

About ChanTest Corporation (www.chantest.com)

ChanTest translates the most advanced Ion Channel, GPCR and Transporter technologies to provide safer, more effective medicines. By combining electrophysiology, molecular biology and cell culture including cell lines, stem cells and native cells ChanTest has developed biomarkers, reagents and services that greatly enhance drug discovery. The Company has alliances in which its technologies are integrated with medicinal, combinatorial and computational chemistry, animal models and clinical trials to provide modular or complete services along the drug development pathway. Since its inception in 1998, ChanTest has tested compounds for more than 500 global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. ChanTest's library of  ion channel cell lines, validated human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and  predictive nonclinical cardiac risk assessment program are  the most comprehensive available today. Because of ChanTest's seminal role in cardiac safety and its 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: Kate Siver, +1-216-332-1665, info@chantest.com

SOURCE ChanTest Corporation