Cardiotoxicity is a major hurdle for all drug discovery programs and so I'm always interested in ways that any potential liabilities can be flagged without the need to go into whole animals. A recent publication highlights progress in developing a novel model system.

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes were cultured as a model system, and used to validate the platform with an excitation–contraction decoupling chemical. Preliminary data using the platform to investigate the effect of the drug norepinephrine are combined with computational efforts. This platform provides a quantitative and predictive assay system that can potentially be used for comprehensive assessment of cardiac toxicity earlier in the drug discovery process. DOI.