×
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

New 'heart-on-a-chip' to test potentially lifesaving drugs

Last Updated 12 May 2017, 14:05 IST

Scientists have developed a new "heart-on-a-chip" that mimics the functions of the organ, an advance that will help test efficacy and safety of potentially lifesaving drugs without animal trials.

Researchers from the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) successfully recorded both electrical signals and cellular beating from normal human heart cells grown on a multi-electrode array developed at their lab.
According to them, it is the first design, capable of simultaneously mapping both the electrophysiology and contraction frequency of the cells.

"This platform allows you to do high-throughput screening of pharmaceutical drugs and predict their effects on the heart," said Elizabeth Wheeler, part of LLNL's (in-vitro Chip-Based Human Investigational Platform) project, which replicates human systems to test the effects of toxic chemical and biological compounds.

"This research allows us to measure two functions of the heart, contraction and electrophysiology, for the first time. There's still validation and data we need, but eventually, it would allow us to reduce the need for animal testing," said Wheeler.

Researchers said the ability to record those two functions would be useful to pharmaceutical companies because it could alert drug manufacturers to cardiac problems caused by a drug early in the process before reaching the clinical trial stage.

Cardiotoxicity is a frequent side effect of many new drugs and often contributes to their ultimate failure.
Other frequently prescribed drugs, such as chemotherapy agents, also are known to be cardiotoxic.
Research using the heart chip could provide experimental information about how the drugs work so that new compounds can be designed to avoid these pitfalls.

The "heart-on-a-chip," involves the use of human cardiac cells cultured for up to nine days on the engineered chip.

These cells naturally and spontaneously grow into a two- dimensional heart tissue that contracts or starts to "beat" after two days in culture.

The tissue was exposed to norepinephrine, a stimulant drug used to treat low blood pressure and heart failure, and both the electrical signal and the beating increased in the cells, similar to what would happen in the body.
The change in "heart rate" was measured using the highly sensitive electrodes in the microelectrode array.
The researchers concluded the platform could accurately and non-invasively measure heart tissue growth and heartbeat simultaneously and in real-time.

"The real strength of the platform is being able to measure both the electrical and mechanical aspects of the heart at the same time," said LLNL researcher Kris Kulp.

ADVERTISEMENT
(Published 12 May 2017, 14:02 IST)

Follow us on

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT