New heart-on-a-chip ‘could greatly improve drug screening’

Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a new heart-on-a-chip that can act as an effective model of human heart tissue.

The new device contains cardiac muscle cells derived from adult stem cells housed in an inch-long silicone device, with its 3D structure designed to be comparable to the geometry and spacing of connective tissue fibre in a real human heart.

Meanwhile, microfluidic channels on either side of the cell area act as models for blood vessels, replicating the exchange by diffusion of nutrients and drugs with human tissue. Within 24 hours of the heart cells being loaded into the chamber, they began beating at a normal rate of 55 to 80 beats per minute.

Early studies have demonstrated viability of this new system as a drug-screening tool by testing it with cardiovascular medications, showing that it reacts to the administration of medications in the same way real heart tissue would.

Study leader and bioengineering professor Kevin Healy said: "Ultimately, these chips could replace the use of animals to screen drugs for safety and efficacy."

The team now wishes to look at how their heart-on-a-chip could be adapted to model human genetic diseases or screen for individual reactions to drugs, as well as whether the system could be used to model multi-organ interaction.