Testing drugs for human cardiovascular conditions often requires a long process, usually involving animal organs. Unfortunately, sometimes drug companies later find out that drugs that pass the test in animal organs are still not suitable for use on humans due to their differences in biology.
However, drug testing might soon speed up and become more effective thanks to a new invention by scientists at the University of California Berkeley. A bioengineering team there has developed a heart-on-a-chip that acts as a perfect model of the human heart.
The idea is that drug companies looking to test new drugs for cardiovascular illnesses could bypass animal testing altogether and test their drugs for toxicity directly on the heart-on-a-chip. This not only keeps drug companies from wasting money on animal testing that may result in a drug that proves toxic to humans, but also speeds up the process of drug testing, possibly meaning more lives saved.
"It takes about $5 billion on average to develop a drug, and 60 percent of that figure comes from upfront costs in the research and development phase," says Kevin Healy, a bioengineering professor at the university. "Using a well-designed model of a human organ could significantly cut the cost and time of bringing a new drug to market."
The bioengineering team used human tissue stem cells to create their heart cells. They designed the heart-on-a-chip's geometry so that it best matched a human heart in both structure and function.
"This system is not a simple cell culture where tissue is being bathed in a static bath of liquid," says Anurag Mathur, a postdoctoral scholar in Healy's lab. "We designed this system so that it is dynamic; it replicates how tissue in our bodies actually gets exposed to nutrients and drugs."
Just a day after they created the heart, it began beating on its own at a normal 55 to 80 beats per minute. The team then tested a variety of cardiovascular drugs already on the market on their beating heart, including isoproterenol, which treats patients with slow heart rates. They found that their heart-on-a-chip responded to each drug, as expected, and sped up after being exposed to isoproterenol.
The team also discovered that their heart-on-a-chip lasted several weeks, which is plenty of time for adequate drug testing.
Researchers believe their heart-on-a-chip concept could work for other human organs, as well, and could even show how drugs affect multiple organs.
