Bringing 3D cardiac tissues to high throughput for drug discovery screens

Introduction

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. Novel cardiovascular drugs have a high failure rate of 91% in clinical trials. This failure rate is due to the lack of proper cardiac models used to find new drugs.

Current Challenges

Drug discovery studies rely mainly on 2D culture models, which have insufficient predictive value of the human heart. A new in vitro 3D model has been developed by assembling human cardiomyocytes into a three-dimensional strip configuration (3D cardiac strip) that better mimics the native heart tissue.

However, this system is not compatible with the high throughput setting needed to perform drug discovery screens.

Innovative Solution

River BioMedics has found a unique solution to miniaturize the human 3D cardiac strips and use them in a high-throughput assay. We combine two innovative technologies:

1. Human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-cardiac cells
2. Microfluidic systems

The Open-TOP microfluidic technology developed in the group of Prof. v.d. Berg from the University of Twente enables the culturing of hundreds of culture chambers automatically and consistently, which is key in high throughput screens.

Benefits of the Technology

This technology will enable the production and culture of 3D cardiac strips in large numbers, bringing 3D in vitro models into a high throughput scale. The end users of this technology are:

• Pharma companies performing drug discovery activities
• CROs providing drug discovery services

Commercialization Strategy

For the commercialization of 3DCardiacHTS, we plan to partner with an end-user and assess their requirements for the use of such high throughput technology, with the intention of securing their partnership at the end of the project.

In parallel, we will discuss the various partnering options with identified potential Pharma partners and/or CROs to determine the best financial deal structure for partnership on 3DCardiacHTS. Consequently, we aim to validate the best business model to pursue the commercialization of 3DCardiacHTS.