Some of the fundamental questions aimed at understanding the physiology and pathophysiology of the myocardium are now being addressed at the cellular level. The principal aim of this Phase II application is to commercialize contractility measurement tools developed during the Phase I period for the study of cardiac myocytes. The digital imaging approach for quantitation of myocyte cell length and sarcomere spacing has performed extremely well in laboratory tests done thus far. The investigators present a number of examples of data collected from cardiac myocytes as well as from non-cardiac tissues which undergo rapid dimensional changes. These experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the optical dimensioning approach and the power of its implementation in the design. The investigators have secured six established cardiac muscle research labs to serve as evaluation sites for post-prototype versions of our systems. Four additional labs will apply Ionoptix Corp.'s dimensioning tools to a diverse array of tissues including blood micro vessels, renal tubules and osteolasts. The range of research interest represented here indicates a broad commercial market for the cell dimensioning systems. Finally, the enhancements to these systems that is proposed for Phase II, including comprehensive contractile transient analysis and simultaneous fluorescence ion quantitation will further the commercial appeal of this instrumentation.
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