Cellular Dynamics International, Inc. (CDI) offers a new in vitro test for drug candidates for cardiac toxicity using cardiomyocytes produced from human iPS cells.
Introduction
Cardiac toxicity of candidate drugs is currently evaluated in several surrogate systems, because human heart tissue is not easily available in the quantities needed to perform research studies. Thus current in vitro studies are performed using cells engineered to model-specific cardiac ion channels (e.g. hERG channel block studies) or are performed using cardiac tissues from animal models (e.g. rabbit or dog Purkinje fibers and or ventricular myocytes).
The advent of the technology of human iPS cells makes possible for the first time the production of large numbers of human cardiomyocytes.
Cardiomyocyte Testing
The availability of human cardiomyocytes for drug toxicity screening is here. It is now possible to perform a repolarization assay on human cardiomyocytes produced from in vitro culture. This assay has been designed in consultation with experts in both electrophysiology and the culture of human iPS cells.
CDI’s non-GLP human cardiomyocyte repolarization assay will include:
Advantages of CDI Services for Drug Safety Screening & Discovery
