Electrophysiological tools for accessible, animal-free proarrhythmia safety screening

Regulatory bodies require to assess the proarrhythmic effects of drugs before commercialization.

Even though human cells proved to be a better model, the high cost and complexity of recording technologies still make animal-based studies the preferred option.

The project aims to make in vitro repolarization assays simple and affordable so that animals used in QT prolongation studies can be replaced with human cell cultures.We will develop new hardware and software for in vitro electrophysiology that will reduce the cost of existing ones by at least one order of magnitude and simplify their use for repolarization assays.

All our tools will be provided as open-source solutions to ease further developments.

The project is divided into 3 phases spanning three years in total, each pursuing a specific goal: in the first 12 months, we will develop the technology and verify the function of our tools.

In the following 16 months, we will switch to stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and validate our approach using a proof-of-concept assay to reproduce published results on human cells using verapamil and bepridil – established benchmarking drugs for cardiac effects.

Finally, in the last 9 months, we will apply our technology to investigate the effects of moxifloxacin on the repolarization period of human cardiomyocytes.

This final study will establish a direct comparison with recent work on dogs and monkeys and demonstrate the capacity of our tools to replace animal-based QT measurements.