New Protocol for Human Cardiac Organ-on-a-Chip Models Opens Door for More Predictive Drug Testing

Study in a Sentence: Researchers developed a protocol for using human stem cells to create cardiac organ-on-a-chip technology to improve reproducibility and enhance predictiveness during drug testing.

Healthy for Humans: Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide, and adverse cardiac effects during drug testing is a major contributor to the high failure rate of potentialnew treatments. Cardiac organ-on-a-chip models using human cells can mimic the human heart’s biology, making them a potentially powerful tool for disease modeling and drug safetytesting.

Redefining Research: Poor reproducibility—the ability of different researchers to reproduce experimental findings—can limit the effectiveness of models, including organs-on-chips.With this highly detailed, comprehensive protocol, researchers enable the reproducible preparation and use of their system. The model accurately replicates key physiological properties of human heart cells, including beating, and the protocol describes how to measure them for enhanced disease modeling and drug testing.