New Study Addresses Variability To Improve In Vitro Cardiac Safety Testing

Study in a Sentence: Researchers conducted a large, collaborative study evaluating the variability of multiple in vitro automated patch clamp (APC) platforms used to evaluate the cardiac safety of drug candidates and found that several sources of existing variation may be corrected by following newly identified protocols.

Healthy for Humans: Minimizing variation in human cell-based tests helps improve accuracy when predicting cardiac safety in human drug development. 

Redefining Research: This is the first multi-site study to evaluate variability across multiple APC platforms and cardiac currents. Using test drugs from an FDA program to integrate nonanimal methods for assessing cardiac safety, researchers identify potential sources of variability and describe best practices for standardized experimental conditions and protocols.