Rapid Screening of Heart-Related Drug Toxicity Using Stem Cells

Study in a Sentence: Researchers used patient-derived cells to generate stem cells capable of producing various cell types in the human heart and used them to test the heart-related toxicity of a class of drugs used for treating cancer.     

Healthy for Humans: This model allowed the researchers to define a “cardiac safety index” to measure the toxicity of the drugs to the heart. It also allowed them to find a new treatment that avoided a specific toxicity effect caused by a subclass of these drugs. This system also advances precision medicine by allowing for individualized drug toxicity assessments prior to patient use.

Redefining Research: This human-based model allows for quick, cost-effective, and predictive high-throughput screening of drug toxicities to the human heart, while also producing results that correlate with clinical observations to help develop new treatments.