Drug development is hampered by high failure rates attributed to the reliance on non-human animal models employed during safety and efficacy testing. A fundamental problem in this inefficient process is that non- human animal models neither adequately represent human biology nor recapitulate human disease states. The discovery of patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cells creates the opportunity to develop in vitro disease-specific model tissues to be used for high content drug screening and patient specific medicine. The principal milestone of this proposal is to establish integrated in vitro models of human cardiac and liver tissue based on microphysiological models of human myocardium and liver with populations of normal and patient-specific hiPS cells differentiated into cardiomyocytes or hepatocytes. We chose the heart and liver as model systems, since failure of candidate drugs is most often associated with toxicity of one of these organs. For this UH2 application we have chosen to focus on long QT syndrome as a basis for proof-of-principle of our methodology. Prolongation of the QT interval, the electrical manifestation of cardiac ventricular repolarization, is a major cause of cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death. Our model will allow for controlled fabrication of human cardiac tissue to study the function of healthy and diseased within novel microfluidic systems. We plan to integrate the diseased cardiac tissue model with a healthy liver model on a microfluidic platform, and then use this device as proof-of-principle system to screen drugs to treat the LQTS. As the heart and liver models will be integrated, we can screen for both direct and off-target toxicity of drugs on the liver. At the end of the UH2 phase, we anticipate our platform will be easily adaptable to design changes and able to integrate with other physiological systems developed by competing groups during the UH3 phase.

Public Health Relevance

The principal milestone of this proposal is to establish integrated in vitro models of human cardiac and liver tissue based on microphysiological models of human myocardium and liver with populations of normal and patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells differentiated into cardiomyocytes or hepatocytes. This microphysiological system represents a significant advancement for understanding, studying, and developing new strategies for treating cardiovascular disease, such as long QT syndrome, a fatal disease. This project will focus on formation of cardiac and liver tissues, within a microfluidic platform, that can be widely used by the research community.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Cooperative Agreement Phase II (UH3)
Project #
3UH3TR000487-05S1
Application #
9265620
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1)
Program Officer
Tagle, Danilo A
Project Start
2012-07-24
Project End
2017-06-30
Budget Start
2016-08-01
Budget End
2017-06-30
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2016
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California Berkeley
Department
Engineering (All Types)
Type
Biomed Engr/Col Engr/Engr Sta
DUNS #
124726725
City
Berkeley
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
94704
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Hoang, Plansky; Huebsch, Nathaniel; Bang, Shin Hyuk et al. (2018) Quantitatively characterizing drug-induced arrhythmic contractile motions of human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes. Biotechnol Bioeng 115:1958-1970
Loskill, Peter; Sezhian, Thiagarajan; Tharp, Kevin M et al. (2017) WAT-on-a-chip: a physiologically relevant microfluidic system incorporating white adipose tissue. Lab Chip 17:1645-1654
Mathur, Anurag; Ma, Zhen; Loskill, Peter et al. (2016) In vitro cardiac tissue models: Current status and future prospects. Adv Drug Deliv Rev 96:203-13
Huebsch, Nathaniel; Loskill, Peter; Deveshwar, Nikhil et al. (2016) Miniaturized iPS-Cell-Derived Cardiac Muscles for Physiologically Relevant Drug Response Analyses. Sci Rep 6:24726
Huebsch, Nathaniel; Loskill, Peter; Mandegar, Mohammad A et al. (2015) Automated Video-Based Analysis of Contractility and Calcium Flux in Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes Cultured over Different Spatial Scales. Tissue Eng Part C Methods 21:467-79
Ma, Zhen; Wang, Jason; Loskill, Peter et al. (2015) Self-organizing human cardiac microchambers mediated by geometric confinement. Nat Commun 6:7413
Mathur, Anurag; Loskill, Peter; Shao, Kaifeng et al. (2015) Human iPSC-based cardiac microphysiological system for drug screening applications. Sci Rep 5:8883
Zhu, Saiyong; Rezvani, Milad; Harbell, Jack et al. (2014) Mouse liver repopulation with hepatocytes generated from human fibroblasts. Nature 508:93-7
Spencer, C Ian; Baba, Shiro; Nakamura, Kenta et al. (2014) Calcium transients closely reflect prolonged action potentials in iPSC models of inherited cardiac arrhythmia. Stem Cell Reports 3:269-81

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